


we were kings.

by alekstraordinary



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Arguments, Autistic Edward Nygma, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Denial of Feelings, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Drunken Confessions, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misunderstandings, Past Abuse, Pre-Canon, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends, alternative universe, sex work (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27561595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekstraordinary/pseuds/alekstraordinary
Summary: “Your name is E. Nygma? That is-” his eyebrows scrunched, as if his thoughts and judgement had just changed from what he had been originally planning on saying, the smallest quirk making the corners of his lips twitch. “That is actually quite funny. My name is Cobblepot. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.” -- an alternative universe pre-dating the events of the show as we know it, taking place before there was the Iceberg Lounge and Riddle Factory, before there was Penguin and Nygma, before there was even Oswald and Ed; it is a story of two young men trying to find themselves, and each other, in the grim and unforgiving grandness of Gotham City.AU playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5W4gVLaq317WVBhhplRMEO?si=pXP3IN3jS7uQdk8jVZ46sQ
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma, Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma/The Riddler
Comments: 32
Kudos: 100





	1. one; Ed.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I’ve been sitting on this idea since before I even finished writing “wanna be yours.” and as soon as I finished the last chapter of that one I’ve decided that there is absolutely nothing stopping me from starting a new AU so here it is! I guess this one will be hitting closer to home for me personally since I’m just turning 20 on the day that I’m uploading this chapter and I’m 1500 kilometres away from home in a foreign country where I’m currently studying working and,,, feeling incredibly alone. And this AU will be mostly about the growing pains of coming of age and finding yourself in unexpected places and trying to make amends with parts of yourself that you don’t necessarily like. I don’t know just yet which direction this story will go eventually and I don’t know how regularly I will be able to be update but that’s just life isn’t it? This story will be about life and we’re going to start on twenty-year-old Ed’s very first day in Gotham when he meets twenty-three-year-old Oswald by accident--or should I say fate? Either way I hope you will join me--and the boys--on this journey. Enjoy! <3
> 
> P.S. As always you can find me on Twitter @alekstraordinar and yes--the title is taken from “We Were Kings” by Ryan Star there’s even a link to the playlist I made for this AU in the description ;)

It was the beginning.

The sheer size of the city hall’s waiting lobby was an overwhelming blend of contradictory impressions--the vastness of it appeared boundless and monumental, yet at the same time trapping and claustrophobic, the marble walls coming in and pushing close at each other despite the stone beams looming so high up that their corners kept getting obscured by the shadows. A great clock bound in gold, with a pale, splintered face was ticking away the minutes at a slow pace, though it seemed like none of its three black arms twitched a quarter of an inch, the bulky frame of it hanging above the high counters with numbers screwed to the fronts, the employees behind them hidden away from the rest of the huge space by thick laters of plexiglass. People were crowding on the uncomfortable chairs cushioned with cracking, worn-out green leather, each one of them minding their own business, but there was a certain tension in their features, every single muscle in their bodies telling that they could simply not wait until the second they could leave this cold, distant place. Even the silence there was thick and overpowering, almost like it was sucking out all the sounds a normally busy place would make--pages of the newspapers turning without a rustle, shoes taking steps across the polished floor without a squeak, mouths opening and tongues moving without uttering a single word. It was deafening to the point of ringing, putting pressure down on one’s temples until there was a headache born right under the plate of the skull, the sort of frigid, nearly brutal reluctance hanging in the air that it verged with hostility, not a single heart beating under the layers of clammy skin. None of them wanted to be there, not even--or perhaps especially--those who were paid to spend long hours under the careful watch of the statues guarding the entrance, almost like they were aware that with each passing second of being there, they were losing something deep down that made them human, bit by bit. 

He had been sitting there, waiting for what by now seemed like an eternity, although according to the beat-up watch with a chipped protective glass and a band two sizes too big for his wrist barely holding itself together with the help of a rubber band, it had only been thirty minutes--and counting. The bleeding ink on the piece of cheap paper he had taken from the nearby dispenser upon his arrival had almost completely faded away, most of it staining his fingers with bloody red from how much he had rubbed at it, folding and unfolding it over and over again, trying to entertain himself with making simple origami until it was his turn. Despite the heavy, nearly crushing atmosphere of the city hall and the tired people slumping their shoulders over blank forms or printed pages, he couldn’t help but feel himself grow the more excited the less time there was between him and leaving his place, marking the beginning of a chapter. A brand new life was awaiting him just outside the glass, rotating door seeming like a bright rectangle of light at the far end of the gloomy lobby and he was barely managing to keep all of this excitement inside, one of his legs jumping in the spot from just how nervous he was. His backpack with the most essential items, and a duffle bag containing a vast majority of his clothes and books were sitting around his legs, still slightly damp from when he accidentally dropped them into a puddle after barely escaping being hit by a car at the crosswalk. That had been far from an ideal start after just arriving in an enormous city he had never been to before, where he had known nobody, and he had had no idea what could await him, but he was not letting it get him down, the thrill at the prospect of living here overpowering the smaller setbacks and unpleasant happenings. He had worked far too hard to get here in the first place to now get discouraged at the first sight of trouble, it had been so difficult for him to even-

One of the clerk’s voices cutting through the dead, motionless silence of the hall like a polished diamond through a sheet of glass shook him up suddenly, pulling him out from his accelerating train of thought so rapidly his lungs stilled in their efforts to take the oxygen in for full three seconds. Grabbing his things in haste and putting an apologetic smile on his face, he quickly gathered himself up to his feet and turned his steps, almost jogging, to the counter with a bold number two written on a plate plastered to the front of it. His heart was speeding up in his chest, its vigorous rhythm beating up in is ears, nearly completely tuning out the repetitive, tired sequence of words spoken to him in an exhausted tone showcasing that the middle-aged woman in a fitting pantsuit talking to him would rather be anywhere where in the world than sitting behind plexiglass with piles of documents stacking up around her. Nodding along to everything she was saying, his hands twitched and trembled slightly as he took one of the pens from the cup on the counter and signed his name on all the dotted lines on all the papers slid right under his nose, only to then repeat his thank-yous a dozen times as he was finally handed a thick, yellow envelope. With his backpack hanging off of one of his shoulders, the duffle bag off the other, he was already peering the sticky wrapping open and reaching inside as he headed for the exit, his fingers excitedly finding a plastic card and pulling it out. From the smooth and shiny surface of a freshly made ID, his own, slightly startled face look up at him, the blurry picture printed right next to the black letters lined to form words reading: _Edward William Nygma_ . The sight of it made a bulky lump grow in his throat as he pushed the door open and stepped outside, finally breathing in with a full chest and heading out, prepared to experience Gotham as its citizen _and_ under the correct name for the first time. 

Rain was pouring down into the streets like the heavens high above had cracked, splintered, and spilled open, as if it was God’s own tears cascading down at the rotten misery of his own creations swarming down below, hollow eyes on hollow faces against the endless, unyielding grey of the city they had risen up for themselves like a kingdom of empty promise. The accumulation of it was swelling up between the curbs like a river, the cars wadding through it with labour and creating waves on the surface, sending them sloshing over the pavements to flood people’s boots and fill them up to the brim. It was difficult to see anything through the thick curtain of the drops bombarding the ground and sinking into every piece of fiber it could find, a blinding layer of it sticking to the lenses of Ed’s glasses as he shoved his documents under his jacket and looked around squinting his eyes, trying to localise the closest bus stop. Once his sight settled on a crooked blue sign mounted on the side of the road, he grit down his teeth, popped up his collar and ran down the stairs with dirty water seeping into his cheap shoes and soaking through his socks to quickly hide under the shed nailed together from spray-painted courraget sheets. It had taken him fifteen seconds at most to make it from the grand and intimidating building of the city hall down to this dirty bus stop faintly reeking of urine, but that was enough for his hair to curl up like sheep’s wool and stick down to his forehead, drops dripping from the corners of his bags. A chilled shiver ran down his spine as he fully registered the dampness of the clothes clinging to his body, his shoes and feet completely wet but even in a state as poor as this, he could at least comfort himself with the thought that he had managed to keep his papers safe. He only hoped that the tenancy agreement he had been keeping in his backpack was still intact, otherwise he wasn’t so certain if his new landlord would be keen on giving him the keys to his new apartment, no matter the deposit he had already paid with whatever money he had still left. 

Standing there, shaking from the cold and waiting for the next bus going in the general direction of Old Gotham to come, he allowed himself for a deep sigh, feeling some sort of weight slowly lift from his curled shoulders as he rose his eyes up to the tops of the skyscrapers looming far, far above him. After all the struggle he had gone through and all the truly terrible experience he had had, it was still rather difficult for him to believe that _he had made it_ , that he was really here, in this huge city pulsating with life and opportunity, and that there was a whole, bright future waiting for him out there. His small smile dissolved from his face, all muscles in his body flexing and tensing warily as he heard someone closeby swear uglily, a dark figure emerging from behind the corner and hiding under the bus stop’s shed on the other side of it, slender hands rising up to smooth down the collar of a tweed coat. The black-haired boy grunting with displease right next to Ed seemed to be roughly his age, the faintest shade of stubble on his sharply cut jaw creating a sense of dissonance with the big, almost doll-like grey-blue eyes framed with _ridiculously_ long lashes. His round ears, high cheekbones, and the end of his hooked, pointy nose were all bright red from the cold and the wind, peppered with dark freckles cutting themselves off almost as strongly as the contrast between his pale skin and deep black of his clothes. As he rummaged through his pockets, the boy kept muttering to himself under his breath, complaining about the weather before he finally pulled out a crumpled box of cigarettes, putting one of them in his mouth and igniting the end of it with a sleek, silver lighter. He looked rather… odd--there was something about the lines of his face and the way he moved his body that made Ed think of a bird, like a crow or a robin trying to make itself appear like one, even his wet hair resembling more of feathers than anything else. 

Although he didn’t want to stare, and he _definitely_ didn’t want to bring trouble upon himself on his first day in a new city, there was no denying to the fact that Ed’s new bus stop companion had something incredibly _alluring_ about himself, and as much as Ed wish he could stop it, he felt himself immediately drawn in, almost like he was presented with a puzzle and his entire skin was itching for him to solve it. It took him exactly five seconds of consideration before he decided that it would simply be a crime not to use the opportunity when it so smoothly presented itself right before him, and so he slid his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his own, almost empty box. “Uh, excuse me. Hi, sorry,” he began awkwardly, immediately tripping over his own words, his tongue tying itself into an even tighter knot as he was given a slow, visibly reluctant look of striking cold eyes. “Could I, uh- could I maybe use your lighter, please?” 

Cocking one of his eyebrows, the boy gave him a very long and very judging look, dragging his eyes from the tips of Ed’s soggy shoes at the verge of falling apart, through his jacket with more than one patch and stitch on it, all the way up to the frames of his glasses plastered together in the middle with a piece of duct tape. With all of his unique and distinctive features, one more thing this peculiar character shared with birds was that, well, he wasn’t very _big_ \--he couldn’t be taller than five-feet-five and, judging by how thin his neck was and how much his tendons were showing at the backs of his hands, he wasn’t particularly brawny either. Yet, despite that, there was something about how he kept his pointed chin up and the way he carried his body that made him so intimidating that although he stood at a solid half a foot taller, Ed could feel himself shrink under the sheer power of that piercing gaze. Slowly, and not breaking the eye-contact, the boy reached inside his coat again and handed his lighter over to Ed, taking a leisurely drag at the same time, a smooth streak of grey smoke veiling his features for a brief second. “You are not from here,” he spoke up, and it wasn’t a question--it was a statement and an observation, his voice surprisingly soft and velvety but with a certain dangerous edge to it hiding right underneath, like a sweet box of chocolates filled up with cyanide and peppered with strychnine.

Ed stared down at him from above the trembling flame he was desperately trying to keep alive against the hollowing wind carrying droplets of rain even inside the shed, shielding it off with his hand as he stuck the end of his cigarette to it. He shook his head as he inhaled deeply, letting the smoke slip down his throat and expand his lungs for an ecstatic second that would eventually cost him precious minutes of his life but now seemed worth it, holding the lighter by the very corner of it as he gave it back. “Thank you. I- I’m not,” he admitted, curling his shoulders slightly as he tasted the tobacco on his tongue, the treacherous tang of it helping him relax for a brief moment that almost seemed like a fair exchange for the havoc smoking was doing to his organism. “I’ve just arrived a couple of hours ago, actually, at the Gotham Main Station--I’m only here because I had to get some- well, some documents from the city hall, but now I’m heading to my new apartment.”He had to bite the inside of his mouth in order to stop himself from sputtering out even more nonsensical words, his nervousness and near-complete cluelessness of how to handle small talk blotching out on his cheeks, ears, and neck like evidence of a crime” How- how did you know?”

“Nobody in Gotham says _please_ or _thank you_ ,” the boy scoffed grimly, something about this remark making the dark circles around his bright eyes deepen even more, the jagged edges of his bones cutting at his skin from the inside. “I don’t know what someone like _you_ is doing in this city, but I advise you to learn its rules. Unless you want to be found dead in a ditch by the end of the week, that is.” No matter the dryness of his words, he still seemed intrigued by someone he didn’t see fit for this place as he turned where he stood to face Ed fully, lit cigarette still burning between his thin fingers, the flaps of his coat coming slightly apart to reveal a very neatly tailored three-piece suit underneath, however old-fashioned it seemed, with a deep purple floral pattern printed into the lapels of the tight waistcoat and a black ribbon with a little gem in place of a tie. It was far from an outfit someone his age would typically wear but it strangely suited his image of a prematurely deceased Victorian youth, something about the way he kept his free arm stiffly at his side making him resemble some sort of a bird even more. He was far too small for a raven, and too scrawny for a crow, no matter the intelligence burning in those pale eyes, and too hostile for a blackbird, too distinguished for a cormorant, too monochromatic for a grackle. But he _did_ strike as someone able to persevere in the deep waters and harsh conditions and then still, somehow, managed to come out on top. Well. His nose made him look like a penguin.

With smoke seeping from his mouth, Ed heard himself speak before his brain could process that his mouth was moving, his pensive voice somehow managing to over the raindrops banging against the courraget sheets above their heads. “It sat upon a willow tree, and sand softly unto me. Easing my pain and sorrow with its song, I wished to fly, but tarried long. And in my suffering, the willow was like a cool, clear spring. What was it that helped me so? To spend my time in woe.” His muttering was met with a surprised, mildly alarmed, and somewhat offended look, putting red heat back onto his face, making it creep down his neck and below his collar in sheer embarrassment. “Oh, I- I’m sorry, it’s just a riddle I remembered. I like riddles.” Somehow, he made it worse, his skin burning even more, like even it couldn’t handle the size of his social clumsiness and wanted to simply melt off of his flesh and float away with the masses of water pouring down the streets. “I, uh- I’m Edward. Edward Nygma.” 

This was the first time he had ever introduced himself to anyone with this name and saying it out loud felt far better and inherently more _right_ than he had originally anticipated it to be--it was one thing to weigh those words in his mouth and let them out into the emptiness of his room, and something entirely different to speak them out with confidence of ownership and belonging. It was exhilarating and freeing, a warm sensation spreading all the way from his lips, down his spine, and to the very tips of his fingers making him tingle, his cells vibrating from the excitement of it. “Edward Nygma?” the boy repeated as he threw the butt of his cigarette down to the ground and stepped on it with the heel of his polished shoe, his tone indicating that he wasn’t entirely certain if he had heard it correctly. “Your name is _E. Nygma_ ? That is-” his eyebrows scrunched, as if his thoughts and judgement had just changed from what he had been originally planning on saying, the smallest quirk making the corners of his lips twitch. “That _is_ actually quite funny. My name is Cobblepot. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.” He smiled for the first time since he had gotten there, confusingly adorable and entirely unexpected dimples appearing in his cheeks as he leaned slightly forward, like he wanted to emphasize his next point. “I think it would do well for your future in this city to remember it, Edward Nygma.”

He was so caught up in the inexplicable charm of what was nothing but creases in the skin formed under unevenly developed facial muscles, and the dopamine rush in his brain from hearing his name spoken by someone else that he didn’t even hear the underlying threat in Oswald’s words. For some reason, though, his guts tightened around each other in what almost felt like a spasm while his heart beat faster as if to remind him that it was still there and that he was still alive despite the numbing cold biting at his face and his bare fingers grabbing at the extinguished cigarette filter. Although there was no logical explanation for it and not a single gesture to prompt him to feel like this, Ed suddenly found himself _really_ wanting to stay here longer with Oswald and to get to know him better, to become his _friend_ . God knew that he desperately needed one, and though this seemed like quite a questionable choice, something was telling Ed that, eventually, they would get along quite well, while a sensation at the base of his skull made him _certain_ that this was not the last time they were meeting. Just as he was about to open his mouth and say something, carry the conversation forward or to ask a question in fears of falling into an uncomfortable silence, suddenly as if out of nowhere there was a bus approaching, its weathered board above the windshield announcing that it was the one he had been waiting for. “Oh- oh, that’s me, I’ve got to go,” he said with a bit of regret, grabbing at the straps of his bags as the bus doors creaked open and a few people stepped out to then rush for the nearest cover from the rain. “But it was good to meet you, Oswald. I, uh. I hope I’ll see you around sometime?”

Oswald shrugged, seemingly indifferent as he pulled out another cigarette and lit it up, taking a drag before exhaling the smoke through his reddened, pointy nose. “Who knows?” he asked rhetorically when Ed was already climbing up into the bus, hands searching to find spare coins for the ticket. “If you’re around Old Gotham or Tricorner much, perhaps. Have a good life, Edward Nygma.”

That was the last thing Ed heard him say before the door slid shut and the rattle of the choking engine became louder, the floor’s vibrations intensifying before the whole vehicle violently twitched back into motion. Grabbing at the poles and still trying to catch a glimpse of Oswald through the dirty windows, Ed made his shaky way through the bus, settling with all of his bags at the very end of it, sinking into the stained seat with sudden exhaustion. His ears and knuckles were still pinching from the wind and the rain, feeling like a thousand of tiny needles were jabbing at them relentlessly, his thoroughly soaked shoes keeping him assured that he was _definitely_ going to wake up with a cold the next morning. But, at least he could comfort himself with the thought that he was going to wake up with a cold in a place he could call his own--in _his_ apartment, living _his_ life, and being _his_ own person, far away from everyone who had ever known him. The perspective of being on his own was just as scary as it was thrilling--there was a whole, new chapter waiting right in front of him, and he had chosen to begin it in a city so vast and full of life it held an opportunity for every single one of its citizens and he was more than ready to reach out and grab it. But that could wait until tomorrow. For now, he simply put his forehead against the window and watched the tall, blurry buildings skip by him one by one as a familiar buzz slowly awakened deep in his brain. 

He was starting a new life.


	2. two; Oswald.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've,,, been sitting on this chapter for quite a while to be honest--I wrote it in like three days and then just decided Not to upload it right away. I don't know why to be honest maybe I wanted to get some feedback on ch1 first or maybe I just wanted to make sure that I would get started with the next chapter before I fully committed to this AU but oh well. Here we are. Chapter 3 is already in the works. Hope you'll enjoy and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts :)

Things were not going as planned.

Gotham was a vast city risen up on top of a grand island protruding from the steel, cold waters surrounding it like a rotting corpse of a slain beast, its mangled remains tucked between Somerset and Bristol County only connected to the mainland by three old bridges, making it almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world, hiding under thick layers of near-impenetrable skin. It was supposed to a metropolis of life, pulsating with ten millions of beating hearts inhabiting it, yet oftentimes its grey skyscrapers towering over the dirty streets in their indifferent mightiness made it seem more like a hollowed-out castle for the dying, sucking out every shred of soul it could get its grimy hands on. There were days in the middle of scorching summer when it was still  _ cold _ , like not even the rays nor the warmth of the sun could quite make it through the thick coat of gloom forever draped over the crumbling buildings and creaking rail tracks, tinting everything with a dirty shade of blue. Fake faces stretched with grotesquely fake smiles looked from billboards down at the toxic waste of Slaughter Swamp, the high-end fraud of the Financial District, and the crippling poverty of the Narrows, preaching fake promises that with enough hard and fair work, even those barely getting by, too, could eventually achieve greatness. What had once been intended to become a beacon of humanity had soon turned into a nidus of disease, its bane spreading through the air like a virus and infecting everyone who could still draw breath in the smog, exposing and bringing out all the ugly parts people so often wanted to forget. This city was sick and corrupted down to the very marrow on its bones, thriving on the injustice and the misery of those not strong enough to handle the pressure or face the darkness lurking around every corner, but with all of its faults, Gotham truly  _ was _ filled to the brim with opportunity--if one knew where to  _ look _ . 

Life was seldom kind or just and it liked to pick its favourites--showering the fortunate ones with good looks, wealth, and all the luxuries imaginable while depriving the unlucky rest of any comforts, instead leaving them with broken pieces of an incomprehensible jigsaw to make a sense of, use it to phantom an existence that could never be quite complete. Well, these were nothing but the upsetting rules making the whole world tick its grim tune, a painful truth best to accept quickly to spare yourself senseless hope or splitting heartache, to make amends with the state of the universe and start working on finding a way out instead of wallowing in self-pity. It was a hard pill to swallow but he had grown accustomed to its taste at an awfully young age, a residue of its sourness and a sense of wrongdoing always staining his tongue and putting a bad taste in his mouth, making itself at home between his teeth and sticking to his palate until he himself had turned bitter before he could even grow up. Things had never been easy for him, not since the beginning of it as if there had been a curse put upon his very existence--born out of wedlock to a poor immigrant woman who could barely make the ends meet on her own, now stuck with a child growing in her belly like a parasite. But Gertrud Kapelput was a saint with a heart of gold that could not be tainted even by the harshness of Gotham and no matter the curveballs life had thrown at her, she had always put her son as her number one priority and she had always provided for him, always made sure that he felt  _ loved _ . Seeing how the world treated her had been one of the reasons why he had decided to make sacrifices when he was a teenager still and promised to make his way to the top no matter what--even if it was just to pay off the debt he felt like he had owed to the woman who had given him everything she ever could. 

It was the high time for him to finally turn the fate around, make something of himself, and achieve something major--his mother often said that he was destined for great things, and he was growing impatient to prove her right and take care of her the way she had taken care of him almost all of his life. He had lived in this city long enough to know that if you had not been born into an already wealthy and fairly influential family, there was barely anything for you to look for on the surface, and if despite that you wanted your name to have meaning and your wallet to have cash in it, you had to go  _ underground _ . Although he was not particularly strong and he was turning out rather useless in any physical altercations, he was making it up twice as much with his sharp wits, knowing when to speak up and when to keep quiet, always staying three steps ahead and having an ear out, because if there was one person who knew what made the cogs of Gotham’s criminal scene turn it was Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. He had been out on the streets passing drugs from different points of the districts, delivering messages to henchmen of various gangs, and helping out in crooked deals since he was sixteen years old--it was the only life he had ever really known and he was  _ good _ at it.  _ Too good _ , in fact, and his sense of pride and itching to do something bigger would often get him into the more trouble the more frustrated he would grow with being treated like just yet another dull pawn in the petty games played between owners of equally badly prospering shabby establishments. Perhaps if it hadn’t been for this sense of pride he had been so insistently clinging to, his steps wouldn’t have had grown so careless, and now he wouldn’t be being thrown out into a dirty alleyway, and kicked down to the ground with a whole array of obscenities thrown at him as he curled up into a tight ball to protect himself as much as he could. 

Albeit it was neither the first nor the worst beating he had ever gotten, he could still barely catch his breath by the time his former coworkers were done with him, leaving him there with his eyes screwed shut and a deafening ringing resonating through the inside of his skull. Still clenching his hands into fists on the top of his head, he forced himself to count backwards from a hundred to one to get himself to  _ calm down _ , the unpleasant creaking somewhere in his chest telling him that at least one of his bones was cracked. His entire body ached when he slowly sat up, trembling fingers briefly sliding over the blood dripping from his nose before resting heavily against one of the walls covered in years worth of posters, pressing against their damp texture as he dragged himself up with difficulty to his feet to fully assess the damage. One of his ribs definitely didn’t feel right but he wasn’t entirely certain if it was broken, the bleeding from his nose and between his gums seemed to already be stopping, and he was neither nauseous nor confused which, in turn, meant that he didn’t have a concussion despite being thrown head-first onto the hard paving. Touching his face, he could feel one of his eyelids swelling but he was definitely in a far better condition than he could have had been--however, despite that, he was going to have to come up with an excuse to explain all of the cuts and bruises and edemas to his mother somehow. Although, without a doubt, this was the preferred scenario to showing up home with a broken bone or a missing finger--he could still remember that one time he had had his forearm splintered and nearly crushed. He had gone through three days pretending he was fine until the pain was too much to handle and he had had to go to the ER, acting like he had fallen down the stairs despite the very obvious dents in the shape of the head of a hammer imprinted into his flesh. So, all things considered, he was fine. He was  _ fine _ .

His breathing was still slightly off its usual rhythm when he walked back out into the street, the sun already almost completely set, its last dying rays shining between the tall, grey buildings to accentuate all of the crumbling corners, shattered windows, and cables intertwining with each other as they spanned across the narrow passages. He had been doing so well at Müller’s crummy bookmaker salon, playing dumb day after day while paying close attention to any information that could later prove itself useful, going through the old betting books while nobody was looking, and keeping a mental record of the people coming in and out. Today he had made the mistake of not staying alert while he had been listening to one of Müller’s so-called business meetings and, as a result, he had gotten himself caught, interrogated, kicked out, and then beaten up on top of that, just for the good measure. Now he was left tattered and hurting, with no job, no money, not even his silver lighter, the secure position that had allowed him to finally move with his mother to a better apartment lost and he only had himself to blame. There were eleven, maybe twelve hundred dollars left in the shoebox he kept under his bed in case of an emergency, a special occasion, or some unforeseen rainy days but that was barely the sum they needed to cover all of the bills--even if they were to tighten their belts, it still wouldn’t be enough to make it until Oswald had found a new job. And he couldn’t tell his mother about any of this, either, because she thought that her son was a good man doing fair work and the last thing he wanted was to break her heart by admitting to being a low-life, pathetic excuse of a poor criminal, and- “Oswald? Is that you?”

The unexpected sound of his name being spoken in an empty street of one of the worst parts of Old Gotham made him stop in his tracks rapidly, his already accelerated heartbeat now quickening to the point of vibrating, the hair at the back of his head bristling as he looked around frantically like a trapped animal searching for a way out. His wide eyes finally settled on a tall figure dressed in a shabby jacket and a pair of worn-out jeans waving at him from the other side of the pavement, the vague yet unthreatening familiarity of it making his aching body relax despite being unable to pinpoint it right away. It was only when the bright-eyed boy came in closer that his high cheekbones, taped glasses, and unruly curly hair sparked a seemingly unimportant memory somewhere at the back of Oswald’s head, the paralyzing sense of dread dissolving almost instantaneously. “Edward Nygma,” Oswald greeted him as he quickly wiped his hand across the bottom of his face, suddenly remembering the bits of blood still sticking to the tip of his nose and trailing down his chin, tainting his skin with dark red. There had been no time for him to tidy up after the altercation, and so he knew he must have had looked pitiful with his swollen face and his ripped suit, but he was  _ fine _ and he did  _ not _ want anyone to feel sorry for him. “Well, what are the odds?”

An excited smile dropping down as soon as he looked a bit more carefully, Edward took half a step back, his body visibly stiffening as his square hands clenched on one of the stripes of the backpack hanging off of his shoulder, the battered thing just as weathered and stitched all over as the rest of the things he seemed to own. “Oh, dear, what happened to you? Are you okay?” he asked with a strangely genuine concern in his voice as he patted down his trousers, pushing his fingers into the front pocket and pulling out a pack of tissues before handing it over to Oswald. There was a wrinkle appearing between his dark eyebrows as he squinted, leaning forward and bending his knees slightly, as if to get down to the right level. “You look terrible! Who did this to you? Do you need anything?” he kept blabbering as he slid his glasses back up on his nose, the broken frames not fitting his face properly, a small crack running over the bottom of the right lens. “Because I think you might need a few stitches for your lip, it looks completely busted. No offence- can you breathe through your nose? You should go to the ER if not, it could be broken and-”

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Oswald exclaimed with irritation as he pressed one of the crumpled tissues down against his reddened knuckles, not realising just how badly he had scraped them against the ground until now, specks of dirt and grime making the wounds sting. Despite his growing frustration and bitterness rising in his throat like burning bile, he couldn’t completely ignore the way Edward flinched at the tone, as if the raised voice was hurting his ears, his entire frame slumping down on itself like he wanted to make himself seem as small as possible, disappear until the surge of agitation was over. He clenched down on his teeth, his jaw tensing visibly when he looked down to the ground, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed while a faint blush crept up his neck and settled on his cheeks, either ashamed of himself or searching for the right thing to say. That gave Oswald a fleeting moment to properly look at his unlikely companion for the first time--Edward was tall and thin and  _ painfully _ awkward, his limbs too long for his torso and his movements too skittish for someone his size, like his skin was not sitting quite right on his bones or like he hadn’t grown into the shape of his body just yet. With a little dip at the base of his nose, there was something about the lines of his face and the shine of his big brown eyes that almost made him look like he was still a boy, despite the dark shade of moustache and a few hairs protruding from his chin like they didn’t really belong there. It was obvious just from looking at his clothes and the way he wrung out his hands that he hadn’t been particularly lucky in life either, but unlike Oswald, he had still retained that raw bit of humanity that prompted him to offer help to a complete stranger, an undeniable proof that these really were his first days in Gotham. Oswald sighed, easing slightly, a wave of weariness suddenly washing over him. “What are you even doing here?”

Edward scratched at his neck, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and grabbing at his glasses once again before he finally responded: “I, uh, I live- I live nearby. Two blocks from here, actually. I just went out to get some groceries since I finally managed to get the fridge in my apartment to work again, but, uhm-” He paused for a moment as he looked up from the ground, his eyes flickering to the slowly scabbing cuts and darkening bruises on Oswald’s face before skirting to the side again, teeth biting at his bottom lip as if he was weighing his words before deciding whether he dared to speak them. “Look, I’m sorry, but you really don’t look so good. If I can’t get you to go to the hospital or let me take a look at your wounds, which I’m quite sure you won’t, would you at least like to have something to eat or drink…? There is a diner right around the corner, we could-” he added, leaving his sentence unfinished as he pointed a thumb over his shoulder to pose a wordless suggestion, something shaped like hope slipping into his tone and peeking from between the letters. 

He was tired. Oswald was so tired, cold, hungry, jobless, broke, increasingly certain that one of his ribs had, in fact, been broken, and still missing a fairly believable story to explain his injuries to his mother with, without alarming her or making her worried sick, he simply didn’t have it in him to decline an offer of a free glass of something strong from someone who hardly posed any threat. Besides, he knew exactly where and what the diner in question was, so he wasn’t going anywhere foreign and he liked the place well enough--he would get a cup of coffee from there every now and then as he headed for work after a sleepless night, desperate to keep himself awake by any means necessary. The entire establishment was poorly lit, the yellow lightbulbs barely providing enough light for the people sitting in the tiny booths with stained tables and seats covered in splintered faux leather to read off of the greasy menus offering the same foods and drinks for the past two decades. For what it was worth, it was a fairly decent place to have a cheap meal--if one was used to going hungry most of the time--and the walls between the sets of the couches were providing enough privacy not to feel like everyone was staring at you. It was good to be able to finally take a deeper breath and let some of the stress stop constricting his lungs with a piece of barbed wire, but Oswald still couldn’t shake off the feeling that something all of this situation was off, that something was wrong and he had to keep his guard up if he didn’t want something irreversible to happen. “ _ What _ are you doing here?” he finally broke the silence as he spent the past two minutes watching Edward browse through the rather unimpressive menu as he tapped a cheerful melody against the flimsy plastic of it. “In this city, I mean. What are you doing in  _ Gotham _ ?”

Looking up at him over the edge of his glasses, Edward stopped, putting the card flat on the table and intertwining his fingers just to start rubbing at the backs of his hands nervously until his skin turned red from the friction. “I just finished college and a place as big as this has more opportunities to put my education to a good use than where I come from,” he explained as he shrugged slightly, dimples appearing in his hollow cheeks as he smiled, the brightness of it making him appear even younger despite the creases forming around his eyes. Perhaps it was just the fault of the light, but his face looked like it was entirely made out of sharp angles and dips in places they normally wouldn’t be found in--on his nose, in his chin, at the sides of his temples, all of it combined with his awkwardly boyish charm made him almost endearing. “I have a degree in forensic science and some references from the internships I’ve done over the course of it. I’m hoping I can get a job at one of the police stations around here, it pays much better than working at a hospital lab. I have an interview in a couple of days, actually, first thing in the morning on Monday at the main station.”

There it was. Out of all the places and professions possible,  _ of course _ Oswald would find himself on the orbit of someone who seemed ecstatic at the perspective of working around, for, and  _ with _ cops, every single last one of them getting away with the things they arrest others for, and being paid for the very crimes they’re permitted to kill over. He didn’t know whether he should laugh at the sheer irony of the contrast of ambitions and worldviews between them, or to allows himself the faintest pang of something that felt one shade too close to betrayal before leaving and hoping to never see this naive kid again. “You want to work at the  _ police station _ ?” he asked with a scoff, tasting blood in his mouth again as his lips stretched in a pitiful smirk, bruised muscles in his stomach tensing up like he was preparing for either fight or flight “I don’t know what sort of white knight complex brought you to that frankly ridiculous decision, Edward, but I hope you do know that Gotham is possibly the worst place on Earth to pursue  _ that _ career path. I told you, you should learn how this city works if you want to last here, and staying all day around trigger-happy cops it the exact opposite of that.” He cocked his hea to the side, mildly amused and somewhat pitying as he watched the joyful sparks dissolve from Edward’s brown eyes, the hooded lids and the hurt expression making him look strikingly similar to a berated puppy. “How old even are you?”

“Twenty. I skipped a few grades and got into college early,” Edward muttered in response, embarrassment tinting his whole face red as he sat back, pulling at one of the loose strings of the green sweater he was wearing underneath his jacket. “I don’t  _ want _ to work for the police per se--cops make me nervous, but with all the evidence to analyse and crime scenes to inspect it makes for the most compelling career choice that also fits my interests. Besides, it pays well, it gives you plenty of opportunities to make connections, and you have access to expensive lab equipment with far less supervision than what you could expect at hospitals or pharmaceutical companies. It just- it just seemed like the most logical path to pick. What about you?” he posed the question in the same breath, like he couldn’t stand having attention centered around him for too long, or like he couldn’t bear to be criticized about something that likely took a lot of time to consider, and it almost made Oswald regret being this harsh. Besides, Edward  _ was _ making a few good points too, after all it was good to keep friends close and enemies  _ closer _ , which in turn could mean that he could prove himself to be quite a valuable ally if he were to get the job he so clearly wanted “What do you do?. Did the person you’re working for beat you up like that?”

Oswald sucked at his teeth as he crossed his arms over his chest, raising his chin higher and squaring his shoulders as much as his aching muscles would allow, trying to make himself seem like he was tough and his skin was laced with iron, but he could feel all the fragile, shattered parts in his chest rattle as he drew a breath. He didn’t like how smart Edward seemed, or how little time it took him to come to this conclusion, but at this point there wasn’t much left for him to lose, especially not through a casual conversation with someone who hadn’t learned how this city worked yet. “I’m a crook, like a third of the people in this city,” he admitted, the words tasting foul on his tongue as he averted his gaze, Edward’s frame immediately stilling “I take whatever job from shady bookmakers or petty drug dealers I can find, I listen to everything they say while I run their errands, I sell the information with profit, and then move on to the next job before whoever hired me first puts two and two together. Except sometimes they  _ do _ figure it out before I can get my paycheck and go,” he said, distress and bitter disappointment spilling out through the cracks in his facade, the rapid flow of it making all the seams and stitches still holding him together creak in the effort to his fluttering emotions inside like grappling birds in a tight cage. “Two more days and I would have gotten paid. I’m probably- probably going to go back to Müller’s salon next week and beg him to give me my job back. Otherwise, I have no idea where I’m supposed to find money to pay rent on such short notice, or how to explain the bruises to my mother. She’s done so much for me, I don’t want to worry her-”

He fell silent as the waitress passed by their table, putting a steaming cup of tea with a generous dose of cheap whiskey in it before she carried on, Oswald’s throat suddenly tight and sore from the pathetic, helpless sob he had been keeping shoved down there since the moment he had been caught. After all the effort and sacrifices he had made to improve his and his mother’s living situation at least a little bit, now it seemed that his carelessness was going to put them both out on the street. There were still ways for him to make money, of course, but the thought of it made cold shivers run down his spine, no matter how many times he had done it before and how much he could use it to stall the seemingly inevitable eviction. Oh, god, what was he going to do? “You can get foundation at pretty much every drugstore,” Edward’s voice knocked him out of his train of thoughts rapidly, the heat of the mug he had wrapped his hand around burning the tips of his cold fingers. “To cover up the bruises, I mean, but you should get some setting powder too, while you’re at it, otherwise it’s going to look shiny and unnatural and pretty obvious that you’re wearing make-up. Listen, I-” he stuttered, as he put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, fumbling with them for a few seconds before finally pulling out a handful of wrinkled bills, smoothing them out on the table before thumbing through them quickly. “I don’t have much left from my savings, but I think you should take it. Just so you can make it until you get your job back, of course. It’s not a lot but it should be enough to get you some groceries. I don’t want your mum to worry, either,” he said, waving the good two hundred dollars he was holding slightly as he put his hand across the table with an encouraging twitch of his eyebrows, a small smile back on his cartoonishly wide lips. Oswald stared blankly at the money for a long moment, the beating of his suddenly thrashing heart pulsating in his ears, muting the usual chatter of the diner, his breathing uneven as he looked up at Edward with utter disbelief, barely able to comprehend what was happening, to comprehend that he was being  _ helped _ \--just like that.

It seemed that he had a friend.


	3. three; Ed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hii <3 it's been a week and I started writing the next chapter so here's your instalment! I hope you're going to enjoy it and as always I would LOVE to hear your thoughts in the comments!! <3

It was not what he had expected it to be.

Although he had assumed this place would certainly be a busy one, he had not anticipated nearly just how  _ loud _ it would turn out to be--there were people talking over each other, phones ringing everywhere, fists banging against the bars of holding cells, old keyboards clacking at every desk, papers rustling as they were passed from hands to hands, every crack and whir of it blending and mixing into an unbearable hubbub. The amount and variety of the sounds alone would be enough to drill into one’s ears and claw at the drums until they bled, but the volume of them on top of the echo resonating through the vast hall like ricocheting bullets made them seem like an assault. Everything in this city, from the narrow alleyways between tenement houses at the brink of falling apart to the freshly built skyscrapers shining as they towered over poverty down below appeared cold and distant, sort of unapproachable, but the police’s main station was by far the most intimidating building of them all. Perhaps it was due to the strange dissonance between its intended purpose and the shape it had taken in the end, providing a certain sense of security but just until it was met with the hip flasks in officers’ hands and suspects’ faces beaten black and blue, when it was proven to be a false one. Something about the grey faces and the blank, almost vacant stares were making the air around tense, sort of charged, like every last person in there was drenched in gasoline and just waiting for an excuse, waiting for a spark to burst into flames and burn whoever was in their way down to a crisp. The tight layout of the desks in the bullpen and the overcrowded inside of the cells plastered to one of the bare walls between rows of file cabinets was making the otherwise immense space feel even more cramped, more claustrophobic, every twitch of every muscle sucking out the precious oxygen he so desperately needed to  _ breathe _ .

But it didn’t matter, it couldn’t matter, he wouldn’t  _ let _ it matter--after all the struggle he had gone through to find himself in this very chair, the last thing he was going to do was to allow his anxiety dictate his actions, or to make him believe that he had to run and hide, give up on something he had been working for for  _ years _ . Frankly, he had grown tired of living in constant fear, of feeling like he had to keep his head down and to watch his step, carefully consider every word before he would dare to speak it, scared of what yet another misery it could bring upon him. That was why he had moved in the first place--he needed a clean slate, a fresh start somewhere where nobody knew him, somewhere where the labels people had been putting on him since he had been born would no longer sink deep into his skin like ink, and he wouldn’t have to spend hours in the shower frantically trying to wash them off. He didn’t miss what he had left behind because there was nothing to miss and nothing to leave either, all of whatever poorly written parody of a life he had been living for the first twenty years of it fitting perfectly in just two bags, both of them just as tattered and damaged as the insides he had to stitch back together after they had been beaten one too many times. There were still moments when he couldn’t quite believe that he had managed to escape everything that had been making him so miserable, that it was as easy as buying a ticket and getting onto a train, that he could have had done it so many years before and save himself the heartache of hoping that, eventually, things would get better on their own. It had only been a week since he had first come to Gotham, seven days since he had set his foot in this seemingly endless city pulsating with opportunity and  _ that  _ had just been the prologue--his first great chapter was only about to begin. 

Commissioner’s voice was coming to him as if from behind a thick plate of soundproof foam, his ears filled with the rapid beating of his agitated heart, his head stuffed to the brim with cotton, all of which rendered him close to deaf, forcing him to rely on lip-reading rather than verbal communication, half of the things being said lost in translation. He had been sitting there, fenced off from the thick and sticky atmosphere of the rest of the station by a set of see-through doors for good twenty minutes, rubbing his hands raw in anticipation, keeping his legs from bouncing and his throat from closing where the knot of his tie was pressing at it by a shred of a miracle. Every grade he had ever gotten, every score from every test, every day of every apprenticeship meticulously journaled and signed for by the people who had supervised him--all of his letters of recommendation and proofs of education were neatly sorted and labelled, showcasing him to be the best possible candidate to choose. There shouldn’t be any issues and there shouldn’t be any problems, there shouldn’t even be any excessive questions and Ed was confident that he was the most adequate person for the job at just twenty years old, but the words gliding through the air lazily became distorted as soon as an unenthusiastic, almost bored “unfortunately” sounded off. He couldn’t quite understand what was happening around him, he couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening to  _ him _ because none of this was making any sense, there was no reason or logical explanation for this course of actions, he couldn’t  _ understand _ . Yet it was still happening, and before he could process the weight of this decision, he was being handed his documents back with a bland pamphlet on top of it, and then suddenly he was already out of the door, walking a walk of shame through the bullpen as the officers at their desks and the perps in their cells all looked at him like they were a pack of wild, hungry dogs and he was a startled rabbit with a quick pulse and a broken hind leg.

He was... rejected. He was rejected from a position he was very much more than qualified for, despite the stack of references he had been collecting for the past four years, and after he had based his entire plan how to build a life in this strange, foreign city--he was  _ rejected _ . The brochure he had been handed along with all of his--now useless--documents was printed on thin, cheap paper with a brown ring from a coffee mug staining one of the corners, the headline written in an ugly font talking about a specialised, supplementary course for aspiring forensic scientists, the bleeding letters muddying in his eyes where the text went into more details. No matter what angle he was trying to look at it from, Ed continued to fail to see why he had not been even given as much as an opportunity to explain that he already had all the skills and experience necessary, faceless people passing by him where he stood at the top of the stairs leading into the station. Exhaling slowly as to stop the throbbing stress from crawling any further up his spine, he folded the pamphlet neatly before slipping it into the back pocket of his pants, simultaneously sliding his backpack off his shoulder and putting the bulky file inside. It wasn’t about his references, he wasn’t stupid enough to fool himself into believing that--the Commissioner barely skimmed through a third of them, paying more attention to Ed’s nervous tics and the slightly frayed sleeves of his suit jacket. He knew that judging, somewhat queasy look painfully well, he  _ knew _ that the only reason why he had not been offered the job was because he didn’t look tough enough to work at a crime scene, the pointless course offered to him as a means of verifying that he could handle guts and gore. But the offer in itself was offensive, it was insulting, a convoluted way of telling him that if he wanted to be a man then he should  _ prove _ that he was one, a statement repeated to him over and over and  _ over _ again until it carved itself on the insides of his lids, clear to see whenever he blinked.

There was a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach as he finally stepped down onto the pavement and helplessly looked around the crowded street he did not know, shivering at the sudden gust of wind blowing through the fabric of his worn-out jacket and chilling him down to the bone. What was he supposed to do now? He remained unemployed without any hopes of securing the position for the foreseeable future and his savings were bound to run out eventually--with the expenses of living in a city of this size and population, they would quickly melt away like snow at the brink of spring and leave him with  _ nothing _ . Suddenly, all of the dreams and plans he had had for his life in Gotham dimmed and then dissolved into an empty black as the matter of his very survival was put under a question, being confronted with the unforgiving harshness of the world once again feeling like a blow to the face as he realised just how deeply alone he was- “And yet, I’m the one who gets called dramatic,” Ed heard a voice coming from the inside of his own head as a reflection looking back at him from a dirty window of a car parked on a curb was no longer his own, the features sharper and just slightly out of shape. “I’m also going to pretend that I didn’t hear the part where you were internally whining at your misery and thinking how utterly alone you are when I’m right here, inside the same brain, since you were five years old. Now, how about we  _ don’t _ throw ourselves a pity party and find a way to get money so we don’t starve to death, hm?”

Sighing, Ed rubbed at his temples and closed his eyes for a brief second, relaxing into the oddly comforting hum buzzing somewhere at the back of his mind, always there and only now growing louder to make itself be known. “Not now, Rid,” he muttered under his breath as he threw a quick look around, making sure that nobody noticed him talking to himself, well-  _ appearing _ like he was talking to himself. Though, come to think of it, talking to himself would likely be far easier to excuse than trying to explain that there was another person living inside his head, actually, someone independent with a personality developed as well as his, but someone who didn’t have a body of their own. It was a rather… complicated matter and he had long given up in his attempts of getting to the bottom of it, of understanding how they had even come to be this way, all of his efforts always ending with an almost blinding headache and an annoyed roll of eyes being thrown at him from across the room. Yes, they had been together for the past fifteen years but that did not mean that Ed wasn’t lonely--there had always been differences in worldviews, goals, and temperaments between them and discrepancies only further deepened as they grew older, grew  _ apart _ . Ed needed a friend, a  _ real _ friend. “Can’t you- can’t you just, please, give me five minutes to process this? I- I don’t know what to  _ do _ .”

“No, of course you don’t, but  _ I  _ do,” Riddler replied immediately, clasping his hands in front of his chest and pointing both of his index fingers at Ed, his face distorted by the smudges covering the glass he was manifesting himself in. Normally, he would make himself appear next to Ed like a clone with only some minor differences between the two of them--dressed in all black, without glasses, his dark hair slicked back and covered in a shining layer of gel while the rest of his head was shaven almost clean--but he never did that in public settings, too concerned about how that could impact their safety. “You need to either stop wallowing in self-pity and get over yourself, or let me take charge so we don’t end up starving, homeless, and then dead like rats in a sewer. Oh, boo-hoo, the police didn’t want to hire you, so what? This is not the shithole we grew up in, Ed, there are opportunities here. You just need to  _ look _ ,” he said, putting a strong emphasis on the last word as he cocked his head to the side, eyebrows raising suggestively, and although he wasn’t pointing at anything in particular, the message was obvious, ringing out clearly in every syllable.

With a rapid inhale, Ed shoved one of his hands into the pocket of his jacket, retrieving a battered and barely-functioning cellphone with a cracked screen and pressed it firmly against his ear, keeping his head low as he moved from where he had been pointlessly standing, letting people bump into him and nearly push him out into the street. “You can’t be serious,” he hissed as his other self’s reflection kept following him from car to car, from shop window to shop window, disappearing in the gaps between the vehicles and buildings only to return in the next one, each time seeming less and less impressed with the direction this conversation was going. His heart was speeding up in his chest and sliding up to his throat, swelling up there like a bloated corpse left in a river, until it was almost completely clogging his airways, the crushing awareness of how dire of a situation he had found himself in making him tremble, the world going slightly out of focus. “I can’t- I’m  _ not _ going to be a criminal!” he breathed out as he clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt, digging his nails into the palm of his free hand to ground himself in the moment, to stop the surge of anxiety from overflowing his lungs and drowning him while he was left paralyzed. “I didn’t come here-  _ we _ didn’t come here to throw away all the chances of having a good, fair life after a  _ week _ ! Besides, I- even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know  _ how _ to. Are you expecting me to rob a bank-? I- no. No, just no. I would get caught, and I would end up in jail, and I- I- I can’t go to jail, you know I can’t, I just can’t, I can’t-”

Riddler’s nearly overwhelming pressure and instance quickly vanished, his tone becoming a bit gentler the next time he spoke, almost like he wanted to approach a wounded animal without startling it and sending it into a panic that could only lead to hurting itself even more. “You’re not going to go to jail,” he assured, posing it as a firm statement, like a fact, something that could not possibly be disputed or questioned. “I wouldn’t let that happen, it wouldn’t be an ideal situation in either for us, would it? But you can’t seriously be thinking about taking that course. Ed!” He waved from a convex mirror standing at the corner of one of the streets they were walking through, half of its surface covered in vulgar stickers and spray paint. “Where would you even take the money from? It’s sixteen grand for four months of information you already have! That’s four thousand dollars of extra spendings every four weeks--even if you could secure a job at a hospital or a drug company, you’re not going to be making enough to save up!” There was a pause before he spoke up again, like he had to gather his thoughts or to formulate his sentences in a manner convincing enough to prove that what he was proposing wasn’t dangerous or simply  _ insane _ . “Look at the size of this city, Eddie. Look at those cops! Half of them are already corrupted beyond caring for any criminal activity that doesn’t directly threaten their ridiculous paycheck! With our skills, we could make more than enough money in the underworld to live here like  _ kings _ . Doesn’t that sound better than barely making the ends meet? You- you need to stop punishing yourself.”

It felt like he had just been slapped, burning heat spreading over his face and seeping deep into his flesh until it reached the marrow of his bones and made them ache from the inside like they were bending out of shape and wanted to slide out of his body. “ _ No _ ,” he said once again, trying to make his voice sound as firm as possible, his eyes stinging with barely held-back years as he looked up at the cloudy sky, the skyscrapers towering over him silently, indifferent to his struggle. “No, and it’s  _ final _ , Rid. I’m- I’m tired, alright? I’m tired of constantly living in fear that something bad is going to happen to me again. I just want a steady, secure, and safe job at the station that’s going to pay me just enough to make it through the months and indulge myself from time to time and- and doesn’t require me to put my life at risk. I just- I just need to find a way to make money in the meantime, okay? I need to find a job somewhere. And you said it yourself, this city is big, there must be plenty of offers everywhere and- what?”

Although he was no longer visible anywhere, Ed could feel Riddler’s annoyance, and almost see him press both of his hands against his closed eyes and raise his shoulders in irritation, breathing slowly through his nose as his silence and buzzing of his presence expressed just how angry he was without needing to utter a single word. “The poor have it, the rich need it, and if you’ll eat it you’ll die,” he groaned as Ed finally stopped by a bus stop, half of its schedule barely clinging to one of the walls covered in obscenities. “Nothing. I’m just wondering what  _ brilliant _ plan of action you could possibly have instead. You’re clearly too stubborn to listen to me and make the most logical move there is, so… what are you going to do now? Where are you going to go? You don’t know  _ anything _ about actually living here, Ed, this is not our town where everyone knows everyone. You can get yourself into real trouble if you say a wrong word to a wrong person.”

“I- I- I don’t know-” Ed stuttered out as he wrapped an arm around himself, putting his hand flat on his ribs and squeezing firmly, the pressure bringing him a certain sense of comfort, phantoming a sensation that he was not alone and that there was someone to hold him, even if it was just him. Biting at his lip, he kept looking down to the ground and counting cracks in the old pavement, as a means of avoiding any potential eye contact with the passerby, not wanting to provoke anyone into noticing him, blades of grass and clumps of grey weeds peeking through. He had promised himself to quit, but he was itching and his hand was reaching for a cigarette before he even noticed his actions, but it wasn’t until his cheap lighter crackled and sputtered out a bright flame that something in his brain  _ clicked _ . “You’re right,” he muttered, still holding his phone up to his ear as he took the cigarette from his mouth and stuffed it behind his ear, fingers wrapping around the plastic lighter until his bony knuckles turned white. “I don’t know anything about how this city works, but I  _ do _ know someone who does! But, uh- oh dear, I was going to ask him for his number when I saw him last time but I didn’t want to come across as weird, and I don’t know where he lives, either-” His voice trailed off as his gaze fell upon a beaten-up phone booth, standing with its door hanging on just one hinge on the other side of the street. “I know his last name!” 

Putting his phone away, Ed looked both ways three times before he decided to make a run for it, too caught up in the moment to bother himself with finding a pedestrian crossing, his glasses sliding down his nose as he got to the other side, barely avoiding getting hit by a speeding motorcycle. “Oswald?” Riddler asked as his reflection appeared again in the scratched glass of the booth, a deep wrinkle appearing in his forehead as he scrunched his eyebrows with visible confusion. Though technically speaking they were together at all times without a break, more often than not Riddler was would exactly be present, instead hiding away somewhere in the corner of Ed’s head and only ever waking up from his slumber when he felt he was needed, or he became tired of not having anyone to talk to. And both of his encounters with Oswald Cobblepot had been the times when Riddler hadn’t been paying attention to the external world, minding his own business and busying himself with whatever world he had created for himself on the inside. He didn’t know Oswald, and all the information about him he had were what Ed had told him--a stream of excited blabbering that had made less and less sense the longer it had gone on. “Didn’t you say that he was some petty snitch barely making the ends meet? Didn’t you give him  _ two hundred dollars _ that, by the way, we could really use for groceries right now, because you felt sorry for him? How is  _ he _ going to help?”

Ed chose to ignore the biting tone Riddler was using on him again as he stepped into the booth, twitching hands reaching for the tattered phone book somehow still clinging to its life, suspended from one of the walls by a metal wire biting into its spine to prevent theft. “I didn’t call him a petty snitch, I called him a minor criminal, all he does is sell information. Or so he said. And he- he knows this city. If there’s anyone who could tell me where to find a job or- or someone to take a loan from, it’s Oswald” he explained as he flipped through the yellowed pages, hoping that the ones he was looking for hadn’t been ripped out. Colbrooke, Coarse, Coast, Coastworth, Cobb- Cobeley. Cobland. “There is no Cobblepot-” Ed said, more to himself than to Riddler, trying to breathe through the sudden, crushing wave of suspicion that perhaps he had been told a lie, that the only string of a safety net he had been desperately grasping on hed just snapped off. “Maybe he spells it with a K? Or- or he doesn’t have a landline. He’s not much older than me, it’s possible that he just didn’t have his name printed in here, right? And- and- maybe his mother has a different name, it happens sometimes that women kept their maiden names but then give their children the fathers’ name, right?Right I- I have to find him, I- wait!” 

His heart sped up as an idea sparked in his head, going down to his knees as he slid his backpack off the ground and opened it up quickly, nearly ripping the jamming zipper off in the process as he pulled out a freshly bought map of Gotham and opened it up, spreading it down on the ground as he crouched. Last time they had met, they had run into each other two blocks from Ed’s apartment and, judging by Oswald’s generally dishevelled state and how fresh the blood was still on his face, it could only mean that wherever his boss’ salon was, it wasn’t far from there. That was the first place he should check--he vividly remembered Oswald saying that he would have to go back to that place, Müller’s, on Monday and ask for forgiveness and if that had been granted, that would also be where Ed would find him. But even if not, not all hope was lost just yet either, as the first time they had met he had mentioned Old Gotham and Tricorner, and although both of these districts were far too big to search on one’s own, Ed had a pretty good idea how he should narrow his little investigation down. Pubs, bars, clubs, bookmaking salons, minor casinos tucked into dirty alleyway--all of those places sounded like where someone like Oswald would look for a new job, somewhere where plenty of people would come and go, doing business under a fake impression of privacy or growing careless with their words after a couple of drinks. Besides, while he was searching for Oswald, Ed could very well look for a job at one of those businesses too--or at least pretend to, as to not raise anybody’s suspicions about why someone who didn’t even look old enough to drink would be wandering around such places. It was a perfect plan, and given Oswald’s record of past employments, it was  _ guaranteed _ that Ed would hear about him from someone, somewhere in one of those crummy establishments--all there was left for him to do was to go, and look. 

There was still hope left for him. 


	4. four; Oswald.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!
> 
> Okay this makes the situation seem much more serious than it is haha but now that I’ve got your attention there are two orders of business I’d like to address! One--I do apologise that the first three paragraphs are so chunky but originally the whole introduction was even longer so I had to stretch and trim it around to make it smoother to read so no hard feelings? And two--this next month is going to be possibly the longest and most exhausting month of my life because I have two essay deadliness and thirty hours of overtime at work so :') I’m still going to try my best to stick to the weekly uploads but if I simply cannot make it on top of everything else that’s happening please don’t think I’ve abandoned the work because I have not and I will not it’s just December that’s going to be really hectic ;;  
> P.S. Oswald and Gertrud are speaking some Hungarian in this chapter--I asked one of my mutuals on Twitter to translate stuff for me and you can find a handy little dictionary in the end notes!!

It was nothing but humiliating.

Cities were seldom things as simple in their nature as a gathering of buildings risen from the ground up to shelter those few who had chosen to call this piece of land a home of their own, ever-growing and never-stopping, spanning further and further around, fastening its loose pieces with bridges and roads and tying themselves into a tight structure like fibres forming a muscle. Especially those as grand as Gotham had evolved more like an organism with its own heartbeat and a set of lungs than a man-made construction, but as it happens to things scarcely cared for, the larger it grew the angrier it had become, turning into a twisted mimicry of what it could have had been with just a bit more effort. Despite all of its faults, however, one thing could still be said about the feral animal Gotham had become somewhere along the way--regardless of its corruption and decay, deep down its insides were still alive and seemingly thriving on the disarray on the surface, connected with each other like a thick, intricate web. Unlike the surface still so blindly adamant on denying its collapse, the underworld had instead chosen to embrace it, functioning well like a system or like a machine, all the links and ties artificial instead of organic ones, cold water working with burning fire to create something more than just a deceiving, disillusioned fog. It was like a little, copper-clad and iron-build parasite that, with time, had learned how to replicate itself to then kept on spreading, infesting the already diseased injuries, slithering into the cuts and underneath the bruises to then crawl beneath the skin at the verge of peeling off. There was a vast contrast of what life was above and below, each one of them ruling with its own rules but, in the end, they were nothing but two sides of the same coin, both working through the faults of weak characters and the inherent flaws of the human condition. One of the most striking differences between them, however, was what consequences one might suffer if they just so happen to seemingly know for their own good--whereas on the surface information and willingness to share it would be able to put you on a fast-track to the very top of the food chain, on the streets, well-

Snitches got stitches, and in a world where everything was done out of sight and away from the earshot, knowing too much would make one but a threat to the shady businesses only able to prosper because there was nobody to talk about the manner in which they conducted their deals and bargains. A real problem would only arise when your sole source of income and ability to make it through the month in a city that could not care less for the citizens lesser than the middle class was that, eventually, you would reach the point where you were discovered and you were simply left out of moves to make. Working on the streets since he was sixteen years old, Oswald had been quick to learn the value of information, but more importantly, he had learned crucial it was to tread carefully with what he had learned, to sense when there was a golden opportunity to speak, and when making a peep would get your fingers crushed ribs broken. Undeniably, he had been quite fortunate with his physique no matter how dearly he despised it--short and scrawny, always appearing like he had missed the last night of sleep and at least two meals, he didn’t look like someone who would pose a threat, and thus he was often dismissed, his employers oblivious to the sharpness of his mind. He had managed to make it work for him for seven years--seven years when he had moved from one job to another, always finding excuses to leave without needing to put his life at stake, either by proving himself to be inadequate for the position or purposefully doing something to aggravate his current boss. It worked like a charm every time without a fail, usually getting him an obscene amount of bruises and a few broken bones, but simultaneously setting him free, now with a head full of precious information he could trade for a higher salary or to weasel his way into a sweeter spot. But, as it was to be expected, his luck was bound to run out eventually--one day he would slip and end up putting himself, and his mother, in grave danger of those who had been wronged seeking revenge, or at the very least being cut off from all the ways of earning money he had ever known.

Now it seemed like that time had finally come and he was left with no job or prospects of getting one, more beatings taken in a single week than he could ever remember, and a small sum of money that was quickly depleting, bringing him closer and closer to the point of finally having to admit to his mother that he had failed her. Just the thought of telling her that the boy she loved so dearly and had sacrificed her entire life for had grown into a petty fiend who couldn’t even succeed at committing minor crimes was putting him in more pain than his recently fractured wrist and the dislocated jaw he had managed to set by something short of a miracle. When her health had begun to deteriorate, first manifesting itself with nothing but mild back pain, Oswald had promised himself to provide for her no matter what and no matter what it took--he owed her that much, he owed her to at least return what she had been doing for him since before he had even been born. There were still… things he  _ could _ do, of course, ways of getting money he had used in the past and would hardly hesitate to use again if only it meant he could buy some time, to keep his mother, and himself, off the street for a little bit longer, just until he found someone who would be willing to employ him again. He wasn’t  _ proud _ of it, and neither did he enjoy it in any capacity, the bitter memories still making his skin crawl and make him feel like he had to rub his skin raw just to get rid of the filth, but it seemed like it was the only option left for him because there came a point in living in the underworld when one became so engulfed in its obscurity that she sheer idea of looking for something on the surface seemed like a joke. An insufficient, slow, and demeaning joke and although the things Oswald had done and undoubtedly would do again in the future were just as humiliating, the least he could tell himself that sometimes it’s better to suffer the hurts one is already familiar with and- “Why are you not eating,  _ babám _ ?” 

Suddenly pulled out of his grim train of thoughts, Oswald twitched where he was seated behind the table as his mother’s soft voice reached his ears, bringing him back to the candle-lit dining room of their apartment--the apartment they would soon no longer be able to afford. There was a big dinner plate standing right in front of him, filled to the brim with completely untouched food, rich and aromatic although now barely warm, his fingers unknowingly grasping at one of the silver forks so tightly there were hollow dips forming at the base of his thumb and between the tendons at the back of his hand. Blinking confusedly, he raised his eyes from the slightly frayed edge of the tablecloth he had been vacantly staring at for at least ten minutes, wholly and utterly lost in his increasingly frantic and desperate tries of finding ways to make money. His mother was looking at him with visible concern spread across her face as she stood right next to him with empty dishes, eyebrows scrunched as she awaited the response, each second of silence only adding to her worry. She was an incredibly beautiful and unimaginably kind woman and she deserved a life far better than what she had been offered, all the luxuries she was allowed to keep limited to but a few gold rings and a string of old pearls. They suited her, without a doubt, but now Oswald couldn’t help but wonder--how many days worth of food was his mother wearing around her neck? “I- I beg your pardon?” he asked as he put a fake smile on his face, straightening up in his chair and loosening his grip around the handle of the cutlery. “I apologise, I drifted off there for a moment.”

  
  


Making a displeased sound, his mother sat down on the chair at his right side, her hand reaching for his forearm and squeezing tightly, reassuringly, as she leaned in a bit more, watching him carefully like she could read what was bothering off of his face. “Why are you not eating, Oswald?” she repeated her question a bit more firmly, but still with enough gentleness in her tone to let him know that she was not upset with him--just worried for her only child. He was twenty-three years old, yet he could not recall a single time in his life when she would be truly angry with him, no matter what he had done or what sort of trouble he had gotten himself into, it had always seemed that her love and patience for him were endless. Whatever had ever happened to him, through thick and thin and happenings terrible enough to break the last few pieces of string holding him together, he could always comfort himself knowing that his mother was there for him, and that she always would. Or so he hoped. “You didn’t have anything since this morning. What is wrong? Did you get sick?  _ Jaj babám _ !” she exclaimed as she got up again, pressing the inside of her wrist against Oswald’s forehead and cupping his face tenderly, raising it up the light. 

“ _ Anya _ ,” he groaned as he moved back, away from her caring hands and the comfort they were offering, too scared that if he were to give into it, he would come apart at the seams and his guts would spill out to the floor, leaving him with far too little of them to do what had had to be done. "I’m fine, really, I’m just not very hungry right now. But it does smell delicious, so if you’d be so kind to save it for me, I’ll help myself when I come back,” he added then, getting up from his seat and straightening his waistcoat where it slud up a bit too high on his stomach, fingers with scraped knuckles tugging at the ribbon he wore around his collar. He was a little dishevelled and mussed up from sitting around the house the whole day, but this might just work in his favour in the end--besides, there was no point in cleaning himself up as he would surely need to spend at least an hour soaking in the tub after his return. “I should be back before midnight, but please, don’t stay up waiting for me. You need your rest.” 

His mother didn’t seem happy at this sudden development, resting both of her hands against her hips as she looked up to him, her eyes the same shade of green-blue as his own, a few freckles dusted on her nose and cheeks. “Where are you going again, at this hour? You told me you weren’t working for that German anymore!” she huffed, uneasy as always when she was seeing Oswald go out at night or come back way past sunrise, each of his escapades at odd times making it harder and harder to convince her that he was a businessman’s apprentice, not a low-life scum without a fixed income. “Which is good, I never liked him. Making my son work on Christmas and weekends, almost no time left for his poor mother!”

It felt like someone stabbed a knife through his heart and then turned it around to drill a gaping hole in the middle of it, cracking and splintering his ribs in the process, poking at the lungs and scratching at torn muscles just for the good measure. He knew it was nothing but her way of trying to have him around more often, to keep thinking of him as her little boy with bony knees and strong Hungarian accent for just little bit longer, but each time she phrased it this way, she was putting him in the kind of pain that made him want to jump out of his skin. Smiling still, he stepped closer to her and pressed a kiss to her powdered cheek. The person she so badly wanted him to remain for a couple more moments was long dead and gone, his remains rotting somewhere in the sewers beneath the unforgiving city he still loved because it made him stronger, it made him tougher, it made him capable of a few sacrifices. “I have a job interview tonight, at a quite promising club,” he lied to her, each half-grey-almost-truth coming to him with more and more ease, his tongue long used to their jagged edges. “I will be back later, don’t worry. And I’ll stop by that store you like so much on my way home, it’s opened all night and we are running a bit low on some of the spices.  _ Szeretlek, anya _ .”

Sighing, she reached to stroke his cheek again, giving him an affectionate pat, unaware of the deep-purple bruises hiding under a coat of cheap, drugstore makeup. “ _ Jaj, én is szeretlek, kicsim,”  _ she told him and then he was already out of the door, his heart beating uncomfortably quickly in his chest, his stomach curled into a tight ball somewhere in his throat when he stepped out into the street, not a single star shining on the black sky forever draped with billowing, black clouds. It was cold, the memory of summer and the last warm days of autumn not standing a chance against the harshness of the wind blowing freezing fair from over the water, the world already laced with frost barely at the beginning of October, foreshadowing a long, dark winter. Oswald was lucky to had had bought a new coat before losing his job, the thick wool of it feeling like the last layer protecting him from the ice-dirt hands of Gotham reaching out to clasp their clammy fingers around his limbs. The hair at the back of his head bristled, as if his body was setting itself to the flight-or-fight mode before he could even set his mind on which bar he was going to go tonight, thumb in his pocket settled comfortably on the button of one of his many pocket knives, ready to bare the blade should a need for it arise. As he wandered aimlessly around the part of Old Gotham not far from where he had been the most recently employed, but still a bit further down, the area known for a certain, not very flattering kind of business, there was nothing but number bouncing off the inside of his skull--monthly rent, weekly food, daily bill additions. By the time he had found himself in front of the door leading to one of the crummy pubs he was more or less familiar with, he already had a pounding headache, stress wrapping itself around his head and squeezing firmly until it felt like his eyes were about to pop out of his sockets. He needed a drink,  _ badly _ . 

Finally taking a seat right by the bar, Oswald popped the buttons of his coat open and tapped his reddened knuckles against the counter, getting the bartender’s attention and ordering a glass of whatever cheapest alcohol they had in their questionable menu. He breathed through his nose slowly as he took the ribbon from around his neck, tied it into a ribbon, and then slid it onto the last two fingers of his right hand--a sign widely-known and entirely unequivocal in this part of the city, hoping it was visible enough to attract attention but still too subtle not to attract  _ too _ much of it. Even for a Friday night, there were quite a few people sitting around, either drinking with their shoulders slumped over the low tables, or looking around with attentive eyes, clearly searching for something, clearly searching for  _ someone _ . Downing his drink in one, uncomfortable gulp, Oswald made a gesture to ask for one more as his eyes kept wandering from one grey, blurry, and utterly forgettable face to another, wondering how many of them would be willing to exchange a fistful of crumpled bills for a quick visit in the back alley. The alcohol burned down his throat and made his cheeks heat up, the buzz of it on an empty stomach taking his perception just enough out of focus to make him feel a little bolder and sure of himself, dreading the long, long night he had had ahead of him a little less. As much as he disliked this, all of this--the dim lights, the biting smell, the crushing sense that he would never quite be able to feel clean again--he had to admit that it was  _ effective _ because not even two hours later, there was short of three hundred dollars in his pocket and just a bad taste in his mouth. It was enough for one day, it was  _ enough _ and he wanted to go back home but before he could even as much as move a muscle, there was a hand on his shoulder again and he felt sick, his mind already coming up with excuses as he turned his head to the side and- “Edward?” 

“Oswald!” a familiar face with a wide, toothy smile exclaimed as a pair of big brown eyes shone from behind the scratched lenses of taped glasses, strands of dark hair curling in every direction. He looked just as ruffled and slightly tattered as always, but even in the dimmed and tinted lights of the pub it was clear to see that he was trying to keep himself as presentable as it was possible for his poor financial situation, all the holes and splinters neatly stitched, fingernails brushed clean. Without waiting for an invitation, he put his backpack down to the ground as he slid onto the barstool right next to Oswald, his frame vastly more open and inviting than the last two times they had met, as if this unlikely encounter was the single brightest highlight of his week. “Hi, it’s so good to see you! I was sort of beginning to lose my hopes that I’d meet you again- you know that you’re pretty much the only person I know around here and I wasn’t exactly sure how I could reach you- Walking out there in the dark when you don’t know anybody is much scarier than I expected it to be. I mean, I’m used to being on my own, but this city is so big and intimidating, and especially after sunset I wouldn’t want to run into the wrong people. Not that I have much to begin with, but I’d rather keep whatever I have left, you know?”

While Edward was rambling away in seemingly nonsensical manner, Oswald quickly slid the black ribbon off of his fingers and stuffed it into the pocket of his suit jacket, right before curling his hand around the half-empty glass still standing in front of him on the clammy surface of the wooden counter. His head was buzzing from all the alcohol he had had until now, the noise inside his skull piling up on top of the persistent tension and trying to erase the memories of what he had been doing for the past hours as soon as possible, his skin already itching as if it was begging him to go jump into a tub of scalding water and rub it with a sponge until it was raw, until he was  _ clean _ . Although he promised his mother that he would be home by midnight, with how drunk he was and how much time he would need to sober up enough to make his way back there fairly safely without unnecessarily throwing the hard-earned money away for a cab, it was unrealistic to think he’d be in his own bed by two in the morning. He only hoped that she had already gone to sleep and that she wasn’t waiting for him to show up--he wouldn’t want her to see him in the state he was in, much less the state he was unavoidably going to go into once he had locked the door of their apartament behind. “How do I keep running into you?”

Edward chuckled a bit nervously as he busied himself with cracking all of his knuckles one by one, a faint shade of red creeping up his neck to then settle on his  _ comically _ high cheekbones. “I don’t know, do you believe in fate?” he asked, but it sounded rather rhetorically, like he realised how ridiculous the question might sound to someone who wasn’t him and he didn’t want to hear the answer, much less being possibly made fun of. “I do. Well, sort of- uhm, the truth is that I- I-ve been sort of looking for you, Oswald. As I said, you’re- the only person I know here, really, and I didn’t want to come across as pushy when we were at that diner so I didn’t ask for your phone number, but then when I checked the phone book I couldn’t find any Cobblepot there, either. So, uh, I went to Müller’s salon because I was hoping he’d taken you back but when I asked him about you he just told me some very upsetting things and threatened to rip my fingernails off, so that was certainly an experience. Then I’ve been- I’ve been walking around asking about you here and there--I’ll spare you the details of the things I heard but some of your former employers  _ definitely _ know how to paint a  _ very  _ vivid picture with words, mostly swearwords.” 

In his hazy state and, frankly, terrible mood it took Oswald quite a bit of effort to understand what Edward was talking about, each scarce piece of information he was giving out wrapped in layers upon layers of unnecessary details and convoluted divagations. However, what was painfully clear to see, drawing itself in every crease of skin and twitch of a muscle was that Edward was nervous, sitting at the very edge of his seat like the atmosphere of the pub was making him so uneasy he could barely stand it. So far, he had proven himself to be quite a sweet and still fairly innocent boy, whatever things he had gone through until now leaving him with more sore patches and tender spots than a build-up of thick skin Oswald had developed. These were not the right settings for him. “I- I’m not really following you,” Oswald admitted as he put his feet down on the floor and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, gesturing at the exit of the bar with his head as he put one of them between his lips, letting Edward know that he wanted to go, that they could continue their conversation outside. “Why were you looking for me?” he posed the obvious question two minutes later, both of them standing with their backs against the cold, brick wall with clouds of blue smoke escaping their lips. “Changed your mind about that no-interest loan?”

Shaking his head rapidly, Edward made a defensive gesture, the burning end of his cigarette throwing a red glow onto his knuckles. “What? No! No, no, of course not, I just-” he sighed, his shoulders slumping as he curled in on himself, fingers reaching to fidget with the frames of his glasses. “I told you that I wanted to apply for a job at the police station, and I went to the interview with all my references and diplomas and letters of recommendation and I  _ know _ I was the best candidate but- I don’t think that the Commissioner really liked the way I looked, or maybe how young I am but- he told me that he couldn’t offer me the job, and that if I wanted to give it another shot in some time I had to apply and go through with some G.C.P.D.-approved Forensic course which is  _ ridiculous _ because I’m a hundred percent certain that I wouldn’t learn anything new! And the course costs sixteen thousand dollars, I  _ don’t _ have this kind of money! I guess I was just hoping that if I found you, you could help me somehow, maybe tell me if there’s someone I could borrow the money from or someplace that could employ me for the time being-” he cut himself off to take another drag, digging his nails into the brown filter. “I- didn’t really expect to meet you here, actually, this doesn’t seem the kind of place you’d be looking for a job in, I’m only here because I thought that it looks shabby enough that they could consider hiring someone who’s technically not old enough to buy, drink,  _ or _ sell alcohol.  _ What _ are you doing here?”

He hoped he could avoid this question, he really hoped that if he steered the conversation away from himself enough, there would be no way to circle back to it, that he wouldn’t have to think of a believable lie or worse--admit the truth and be faced with a judging look at best, an utterly disgusted one at worst. Well, but what did he have to lose at that point, really? “Making money,” Oswald responded candidly, letting the butt of his cigarette fall down to the damp ground and crushing it with the sole of his shoe. There was not a single reason he could come up with why he should lie, but perhaps it was just the booze still coursing through his veins that made all the walls in his brain fall down, keeping any one of them up requiring far more energy than there was left in him. “It is a shabby place, yes. But shabby places like these attract- men looking for  _ short company _ … I have to take care of my mother, Edward, and sometimes you run out of options.”

There was a stretch of uncomfortable silence, the weight of it far greater than the deeds themselves, but as bitter as it tasted, there was some sort of cathartic relief in this admission, almost like it could wash away some of the grime still clinging to every bit of his flesh, no matter how hard he had tried to scrape it off in the past. “Ed,” Oswald finally heard, the tone quieter and gentler,  _ kinder _ . “You can just call me Ed. And- I’m sorry I was looking for you, I’m sorry I was bothering you, I didn’t- didn’t fully realise how difficult you must have it on your own, providing for your mother and looking out for yourself. Look, I- I know I was complaining, but I’m sure I’ll find a job sooner rather than later, and I just sold some of my old textbooks so I have a bit of savings, I can give them to you so you don’t have to-” He exhaled sharply, looking anywhere but at Oswald, like he was the one who was embarrassed, like he was the one who had something to be ashamed of and despite the obvious extensive knowledge and education, he was still left clueless as to how to approach a matter such as this. “You must really love your mother,” he just added, wringing his hands out and it was in that moment that something inside Oswald’s chest softened, a string deep inside of him snapping, some part opening up and pouring out a feeling he couldn’t quite understand nor describe, but, for a brief moment, it made him feel safe. 

There was someone he could trust. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> babám--my baby; term of endearment  
> jaj babám--oh, my baby!; exclamation  
> anya--mum  
> szeretlek, anya--I love you, mum  
> jaj, én is szeretlek, kicsim--Oh, I love you too, my little one


	5. five; Ed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyy <3 so here's the next instalment as usual! It turned out a bit longer than I was planning it to be but uh I needed the space so the Boys could have some proper Bonding™ this time- anyway there's a little dictionary with all the Hungarian phrases I used in this chapter so you're not as clueless as Ed is while hearing it and ALSO I'd like to remind everyone of my misery that I'm starting my horrendous 4am overtime at work tomorrow and realistically speaking I don't know how much energy I will have to write 

He was truly beginning to struggle.

Generally speaking, a great portion of life seemed to divide itself into three main categories--the bad days, the worse days, and the absolutely  _ awful  _ days. Bad days were usually filled with small, seemingly insignificant things interspersed throughout the waking hours, such as missing the bus by merely half a minute, finding your food was still cold on the inside after heating it up, or being unable to get rid of that pesky pebble in your shoe, each one of the happenings making you more irritated and upset than the previous one. Worse days often began to push one’s limits in more cruel manners--getting reprimanded by a supervisor for something beyond your power, being unable to fight a headache making itself at home between your ears for the fourth day in a row, or learning of the vile things being spoken about you behind your back by someone you were fond of. Then there were the awful days, days so distressing they nearly seemed like a cruel test, like failing at getting your dream job, missing getting run over by a speeding car by the width of an eyelash, yet another bill landing on top of the already growing pile with no means of paying any of them off. It almost made it seem like there was some sort of a higher power ruling over the grey masses of humanity crawling beneath it, a power very much focused on making sure that no person it didn’t deem worthy went through life for more than a few hours without it becoming bitter. But this was just the way life  _ was _ \--there was no rhyme nor reason to it and getting angry over things beyond one’s own control could only make the miserable moments more intolerable whereas, logically, rationalizing the senselessness should take some of the pain off. The real issue only ever arose when the bad days had become so common that they seemed like the norm, like the plateau, making the worse days to be just hiccups, however frustration steadily built made the awful days grow larger in size, exaggerating them to the point of aching and Ed couldn’t remember the last day when he hadn’t felt bad, worse, or awful.

Not even a week after he had miraculously found Oswald in a seedy bar at the outskirts of Old Gotham, the security he had managed to develop on the comforting foundation that there was at least one person he could rely on that, maybe, things would change for the better from now on, everything else seemed to begin crumbling around him. It would be a lie to say that the thought of being rejected for the position he had been aspiring towards all of his teenage years  _ solely _ on the grounds of not looking to the Commissioner’s liking didn’t sting anymore, each reminiscence of it rubbing fistfuls of salt into the open wounds. His searches for a different job were proving themselves to be just as fruitless, no place of worth or at least the slightest bit of thrill willing to hire him, spare for a couple of pharmaceutical laboratories he had no interest in working for. Although he knew that beggars--and he certainly was close enough to utter poverty to call himself one--couldn’t be choosers, he was still more inclined to dying of starvation rather than mindnumbing boredom he would surely experience over spending his days working on entirely uninteresting pills. Meanwhile Riddler, as Ed should have had expected, had plenty of opinions about the ways Ed had been using their opportunities in Gotham this far, buzzing outside  _ and _ inside his head whenever an occasion presented itself, rambling about and insisting on considering seeking employment in the underworld. There had also been a whole plethora of smaller things going the wrong way for him, as if the city itself pronounced him to be a foreign object or a bacteria to be killed, and now it was overworking its fragile system to find the means of expelling him from the depths of its mangled, rotting body. Just over the course of the past forty-eight hours, his only lighter had stopped working, the fridge in his infinitesimal apartment gave out for the third time that week, and the last fifty dollar bill he had still had, had gone missing somewhere, probably stolen or dropped on the street. All of that happening at once on top of, well, being yelled at, promptly evicted, and then punched just for the good measure for causing a mild explosion that hardly even smouldered the kitchen’s walls, consequently rendering him homeless. 

What he had not so long ago believed to be his fresh start at a new life with a clean slate in a place with an abundance of oppotunity was now turning out to be year another unfortunate series of mishaps, the crash from the optimistic high making him hurt more than having had lived years without as much as a shred of hope to cling to. The little money he had still had left from his savings and selling anything of value he had owned was nearly completely depleted and he was left with his wallet as empty as his stomach, with no chances of getting his deposit back, or means to afford a room in the shabbiest motel in all of Gotham. Once again, he had found himself standing alone on a darkened street with all that he was and all that he owned packed in two bags held together by numerous patches, stitches, and pieces of rope in the same fashion that his very being seemed to only keep itself from falling apart by some duct tape, few drops of cheap glue, and a handful of safety pins. But at least this time there was someone he could turn to, no matter how much his fingers were trembling while they tapped the number into his barely working phone and his insides felt like they were about to turn inside out when he listened to the crackling of the line before hearing a familiar  _ click _ . It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right to call and ask for help someone who he  _ knew _ was in a more dire situation that he was, going to the extremes to find the means to provide for himself and someone else, but the difference between them was that Oswald was strong enough to do whatever it took to not let the city swallow him, and kind enough to lend Ed a helping hand. 

Here he was now, walking through a completely unfamiliar part of the district at a quick pace, his bags jumping on his back and hitting against his ribs as his eyes kept flickering between the old, almost faded plates with street names and the crumpled map he could barely see in the growing dark. During their rather brief phone call, Oswald gave Ed his exact address, but even narrowing Gotham down to just its Old part left an area far too great to be able to lay out the exact directions of getting from its one end to the other one. Which, in turn, meant that Ed had to figure the route out on its own, the task proving itself to be quite challenging as he was still rather unaware of the right and the wrong ways of navigating the city, only vaguely knowing of which streets he should avoid after sunset. As he made his way closer to his destination, he couldn’t help but feel his heartbeat speeding up rapidly and a tingling sensation crawling over, sudden shortness of breath announcing the arrival of a surge of anxiety, making him feel almost electrocuted, his chest tightening in on itself. He still wasn’t sure whether he  _ should _ resort to this solution, but at the same time he was all too aware that accepting someone’s hospitality was his only choice, the only other place he could spend the night in being the streets. Ed wanted to believe that Oswald liked him well enough, but there had been an unmistakeable hesitance in his voice that clearly implied that this was hardly a friendly act of service, but rather a means of paying off the debt he felt he owed. And Oswald’s mother was going to be there, wasn’t she? Oswald had only spoken of her in superlatives in the past, praising her up to the Heavens for her kindness, but how was she going to react to seeing a tattered stranger at her door-? 

As it creaked open and Ed’s gaze fell upon the short, older woman stepping to the threshold, one of her arms very obviously reaching to the side for whatever weapon she had hidden there, there was not the faintest shade of doubt in his head that this could only be Oswald’s mother. Though her hair was a curled mass of greying, ashy blond and her figure was fuller--the two characteristics being the polar opposites of those of her son--there was something about the kind of clothes she wore and the way she held herself that Oswald definitely reflected. Ever since their first meeting, Ed had always thought that Oswald had a certain quality to his sense of fashion and manner in which he spoke and moved that made him seem more like a lost soul of an upper-class gentleman born in the nineteenth century rather than a dirt poor petty criminal knowing the sewers like the back of his hand. Now it was clear to see where he had gotten it from--his mother was dressed in an old-fashioned dress with lacy sleeves, a string of pearls hanging loosely around her neck and her hands decorated with antique rings as she kept her back straight and her chin up, every inch a lady no matter the place she resided in. “What do you want?” she asked him with a strong accent he couldn’t quite put his finger on as she scanned him up and down warily, her eyes the exact same shade of blue-green as those of her son.

“I- uh-” Ed stuttered out, too caught-off guard with how Oswald’s mother managed to look somehow exactly yet not at all the way he had expected, to recite the greeting and cause for the visit he had been rehearsing in his head for the past hour to avoid coming across as awkward. “I- hello! I’m Ed, Ed Nygma. I’m, uh, I’m a friend of Oswald’s, I talked to him on the phone and he said it would be okay if I could possibly stay with you a few days? I- I’m not sure if he’s mentioned, but I wouldn’t want to impose-”

The very second he spoke Oswald’s name, the woman perked up and her face brightened, her frame opening up and her shoulders losing their tension as she brought both of her hands together in a clap, giving him a wide, seemingly genuine smile. “Ah, you’re Oswald’s friend! I’m Gertrud, I’m his mother. Come in, come in!” she exclaimed with delight to her tone, the rolling of her r’s ringing in her strangely intonated speech, only further assuring Ed that English definitely wasn’t her first language. Ushering him inside with a wave of her elegant hand, she walked back into the apartment where, surely enough, there was a hefty-looking baseball bat propped against the wall, right next to the door and below a row of coats hanging on hooks, one of which Ed immediately recognized to be Oswald’s winter coat. It was really warm in there, the heated air permeated with a strong, rich, and meaty scent radiating from where he assumed was the kitchen, a single whiff of it making his shrivelled stomach rumble, as if to reprimand him for skipping the last two meals. The interior design was just as old-fashioned as he could have had expected it to be--some pieces of the furniture, the photo frames standing on chests of drawers, and even the pattern of the wallpapers looking like they had been taken straight from a Victorian-era household, peppered here and there with more modern accents such as electrical outlets, or a bulky TV. Ed couldn’t tell why, especially seeing how this was his first time visiting two people he barely even knew to begin with and his instincts should be telling him to flee, yet he felt an odd sense of ease wash over him. “ _ Kicsim, itt van a kis barátod _ !” she called out down one of the corridors before turning back towards Ed. “Are you hungry? I’m almost done making dinner, we’re having  _ brassói  _ tonight, it’s one of Oswald’s favourites!”

Before Ed had the chance to admit that he didn’t have the finest idea what sort of a dish she was talking about, but he would very much like a portion nevertheless, there was a familiar voice coming from down the hall, right before Oswald emerged from one of the rooms, putting his suit jacket on in the process. “ _ Anya _ !” he groaned, making sure that his cufflinks were closed properly, little red gems matching the one in his ribbon shining from his wrists. “Please, don’t smother my friend before he even had the chance to take his jacket off. And I told you, Ed will be staying with us for a few days, so I  _ will  _ join us for dinner. Although, I’m rather sure he doesn’t know what  _ brassói  _ is.” He smiled at her, the kind of smile Ed hadn’t seen on his face before--warm and soft, reaching all the way up to his usually cold eyes. “So he’ll be quite lucky to be introduced to it through your cooking.”

Ed’s stomach tightened and slid up to his chest cavity, his entire body tensing with an alarm blaring in his head and cold shivers running down the length of his spine as he saw Gertrud suddenly reach up to Oswald’s face to- then caress his cheek affectionately and give him a gentle pat. “ _ Jaj, babám _ !” she said to him, and although Ed couldn’t understand, he was sure just from the way she spoke those words that it was a term of endearment, a special nickname he was told mothers oftentimes had for their children. “ _ Nagyon aranyosnak tűnik! _ ”

His mouth falling open, Oswald honest-to-go laughed, shaking his head. “ _ Anya, ne _ !” he told her before turning his eyes at Ed, the freckles on his high cheeks a little bit more visible against the contrast of a healthy, amused flush spreading over his face briefly. It was… it was  _ bizarre _ to see the two of them like this, a mother and her child laughing together over something in what almost seemed to be their own, secret language, just how tight their bond was visible just from the way they talked and looked at each other, like they were the most important people in each other’s lives. He didn’t know the full story, he only knew what he could piece together from the incredibly scarce scrapes Oswald had offered to him that evening when they sat at a cheap diner over cups of bitter tea, but after but a couple minutes of seeing them together, Ed was no longer surprised that Oswald was willing to go above and beyond to make sure that his mother was happy, comfortable, and provided for. “Oh, I apologise, Ed. My mother does love to gossip in Hungarian, especially when the guest doesn’t speak a word of it. But don’t worry, she just said that you seem nice.”

“Oh,” Ed muttered, not entirely sure what he should respond after witnessing such an intimate moment, but the cogs in his brain were already spinning, invisible fingers thumbing through cabinets filled with thousands upon thousands of files in the search of the relevant information. “Hungarian! I couldn’t really tell what language you were speaking, but the way you pronounce your r’s was putting it somewhere in Eastern Europe, Slavic or Balkan, which is quite funny since Hungarian isn’t an Eastern European language. For a long time, linguists thought it was an isolated language, actually, but then later on it was actually commonly agreed upon that it belongs in the Uralic language family with languages like Estonian and Finnish, which is strange given Hungary’s geographic location. Most Uralic languages come from Northern Eurasia, while Hungary is sort of sandwiched Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, and just a smidge of Slovenia and Ukraine but- I- haven’t looked into it that closely-”

Red-hot blush made its way up his neck as he realised on what an embarrassing ramble he had allowed himself to go on yet again, two pairs of equally bright and equally widened eyes looking at him with surprise, taken by surprise by this unexpected flood of information they probably had already possessed to begin with. Gertrud was the first to shake this bewilderment off, giving a hearty laugh before touching her son’s shoulder and speaking to him once more, although she never stopped looking at Ed for even a brief second. “ _ Kedvelem őt _ ,” she just hummed.

The dinner had passed in a… strange atmosphere, so to say--it had been slightly tense and wary at first, as if all three of them needed to test the waters before deciding just how much they could allow themselves to loosen up, the spirits easing down slowly but surely. Ed, however, remained uncomfortable to a certain extent throughout the whole meal, keeping his shoulders slumped and his eyes down on his food while he tried to eat as quickly as possible without choking, not wanting to impose himself any more than it was absolutely necessary. He was entirely unfamiliar with these settings, this tightly-knit sense of closeness and trust there so clearly was between Oswald and his mother filling him with a cold shade of dread, like he was watching something so foreign and incomprehensible that it couldn’t settle quite right into his brain. Gertrud had been perfectly lovely and hospitable to him from the very second he had introduced himself--treating him to the seconds of the truly delicious meal she had made, and then also offering him dessert afterwards, shaking her head and commenting on how skinny he was, “just like her Oswald”. She had even gone as far as to share stories while pointing to some of the photographs decorating the shelves, most of them picturing her son at different stages of life, all the way from a big-eyed and round-faced freckled baby suckling on a pacifier, through an especially awkward and scrawny teenager with a big nose and first shade of stubble on his chin, to the most recent ones, looking like they had just been taken a few days ago. Once she had made sure that her guest was well-fed and comfortable enough with sleeping on the couch, she had excused herself off to her bedroom, leaving Ed and Oswald alone, sitting in front of the burning fireplace with a bottle of wine between them.

It was really the first time Ed drank alcohol out of his own accord and not pressured by his peer to take a gulp of the burning whiskey one of them had stolen from their father’s office, and though at first he was still hesitant, half an hour later he was enjoying himself quite a bit. He could certainly see the appeal of it now--the taste took some time to adjust to, but once his tongue had grown accustomed to the weirdly dry sensation, he decided that he liked the way it made his head spin slightly, his body warming up from the inside. “Your mother is very nice,” he spoke up as he tried not to watch the way Oswald moved when he made his way back to the couch, another bottle of wine in his hand as he reached for the corkscrew to open it up, his eyes just a little bit vacant. “And she’s an incredible cook. I don’t think I’ve eaten anything this good- well, I don’t think I’ve  _ ever _ eaten anything this good.”

Oswald nodded his head enthusiastically as he refilled their cups, a bit of the wine sloshing over the edge and dribbling down to his slim fingers and hanging off of their tips as he took a sip, settling himself more comfortably with his feet up on the coffee table standing in front of them. “My mother is a saint,” he agreed, licking the droplets off his skin, all of his usual reserved, Victorian-esque demeanour dissolving more and more with each sip he drank. “She raised me completely on her own, you know. She juggled three jobs at once, yet she still had the time to tuck me to bed and sing me a lullaby every night when I was a child,” he chuckled softly, the memory clearly dear to him. 

“Oh, I’m sorry-” Ed mumbled from over his own cup, dragging one of his legs up to his chest as his eyes wandered over the photographs in curled, steel frames illuminated by the orange glow blazing from below. There was at least a dozen of them on the mantlepiece alone--most of them depicting Oswald, his mother, or the two of them together throughout the years, only a couple of them differing with views of tall buildings or black-and-white blurry faces printed on yellowing paper. All of them were coming together to form a crystal clear image of a young immigrant woman coming to the land of promise and having a child here, but there was something missing from the picture, there was  _ someone _ missing, one peice of puzzle misplaced somewhere and leaving a hole right in the middle. “What about- what about your father?” Ed asked as a squeaky, sluggish switch finally clicked into the right position and pushed his fogged brain back into motion, the shapeless, absent figure suddenly making itself obvious and crisp. “I don’t see him any of the pictures. I’m sorry, is he-?”

Shrugging, Oswald made a dismissive gesture as if he didn’t care much for the matter, but the bitterness that suddenly poured over his features showed that Ed had just touched on an especially sore spot, one that should best be left alone, because it didn’t cause much pain as long as it remained unacknowledged. “I have never known or never even met him,” he stated candidly, his jaw tensing as he looked into the flames absentmindedly, all of the lines and angles in his face seeming more jagged in the half-shadows, the edges of it sharp enough to draw blood if someone was so bold as to reach out and try to touch them. “But my mother, uh- she told me about him, years ago, when I was still a child and I supposed she’d hoped I wouldn’t remember. She came here, to Gotham when she wasn’t much older than me, fled Hungary barely speaking any English and having to adjust from a vastly different lifestyle. Then she got a job as a cook and a waitress, you know, doing anything around the bar that needed doing and that’s how- that’s how she met  _ him _ .” Oswald tilted his head back as he finished his wine in a couple of big gulps, putting the ceramic cup back down on the table with a  _ bang _ , hands already shaking as he reached for the bottle again. “She said they fell in love and he loved her, that he  _ really _ did, but- uh, he was a wealthy man, an heir to some business or a fortune and his parents weren’t quite pleased to hear that he was  _ having relations _ with a cook. He had a choice, either stay with my mother or to stay on his parents’ good side, and she told him to go. She wanted him to stay with her, but she didn’t want him to just abandon everything for her because god knows she knew what it’s like to have to leave  _ everything _ you know behind, so she told him they were done. A week later, she found out she was pregnant.”

Ed sat there in silence, unwittingly holding his breath from just how engaged he had caught himself getting in the story he was being told, nothing preparing him for this turn of events, although he suspected he should have had guessed where this was going right from the start. Perhaps it was just the alcohol muddying down his usually bright mind, but the way Oswald intonated the last sentence  _ hurt _ , like he was blaming himself for the way his mother’s life had turned out, no matter how with everything she did and everything she said she was showing him that having a son was the best gift she could have had ever possibly received. “Oh-” Ed breathed out at the long last, rubbing the fingers of his free hand against each other in a nervous manner, his eyes wandering around the room, not sure what they should settle on when he next spoke. “I’m- I’m really sorry to hear that, Oswald. But from the little I know your mother, it seems like she wouldn’t exchange you for a more comfortable lifestyle. And she knows how much you’re doing for her, doesn’t she? She has to.”

With his feet back on the coffee table, Oswald just sucked at his teeth. “Oh, no, I know she wouldn’t. She loves me very much, I know she does. That thing she calls me?  _ Babám _ ? It means  _ my baby _ .” He sighed, not with tiredness but rather with relief, draping his arm over the back of the couch and turning in his spot to face Ed more directly, pointing at him with a finger of the hand still wrapped around the wine. “What about you, Ed Nygma? What brought you to Gotham, of all places?”

To come to this point of the conversation was unavoidable, and Ed knew that they would have to eventually circle back to him the very second he had decided to make a comment about Gertrud, and then further pushed it with nosy questions about Oswald’s father. “I- I don’t think there’s much to say,” he muttered as he finished his drink, taking the bottle into his hands and pouring himself another one, desperate to busy himself with something and avoid eye contact at all cost. “My mum died when I was five. It- it was a hit and run, she was looking for me playing on the street when a drunk driver crashed into her and then kept driving. My father- I- I don’t really think he’s ever forgiven me for that, he’s always told me that it was my fault that she died, that I wasn’t supposed to go that far away from home but I just spotted a bird I’ve never seen before and I wanted to find its nest-” His mouth felt try no matter how much he drank, his body turning cold despite the red fire still roaring four feet away from him, the unpleasant memories sucking all the warmth from the room and twisting his body until it was completely out of shape and he didn’t know what to do with his limbs. “He screamed a lot, sometimes hit too, he- he always told me how stupid I was, no matter how many grades I skipped or what awards I brought back home. So, uh, when I finished high school when I was fifteen and I got a Science scholarship at a university a few cities away from there, I just packed my bags and left, and- I’ve been on my own since then. I’m not really- good at making friends.” 

Judging by the silence that once again draped itself over them, this was an answer far from the one Oswald must have thought of it, likely expecting a story of a gifted child exceeding all of his peers or a lone runaway from a home where he had always been provided for. That could not be further from the truth, and as it was now turning out, between the two of them Oswald was the one with far more luck then Ed had ever had--although he had never had to resort to the life of crime to keep himself fed, he had never had the warmth and the safety of a loving home either, and he knew that he likely never would. At least, there was still a possibility for him to have a somewhat comfortable and tolerable existence, and if anything, he should stop being picky and call one of the labs that had so kindly accepted his applications and offered him a job- “My mother really likes you, you know,” Oswald told him nonchalantly, resting his cheek on his curled fist as he lulled his head to the side, his jet-black hair a little ruffled where it rested on his forehead. He really looked like a bird with this feathery cut and a large, pointed nose and wrists so thin they seemed like they would break upon the faintest touch, his green-blue eyes having something about them that reminded of the vast and warm summer skies. “I think you really pulled a number on her with showering her with all those facts about Hungary, which I’m really  _ not _ questioning why you knew in the first place. But, she likes you. I’m sure she’d love to have you over for dinner more often,  _ my friend _ ,” he finished off, the last two words slipping off the tip of this tongue so naturally, so effortlessly like this hadn’t been the first time he had thought of Ed as such, but merely the first time he had said it out loud.

They were in this together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kicsim, itt van a kis barátod!--Baby, your friend is here!  
> Anya!--Mum!  
> Jaj, babám!--Oh, my baby!  
> Nagyon aranyosnak tűnik!--I think he's cute!  
> Anya, ne!--Mum, no!  
> Kedvelem őt!--I like him!


	6. six; Oswald.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone!! I'm so sorry that it's taken me two weeks to upload this chapter but ahhh life has been really crazy you know? I've been incredibly stressed about whether or not I'd be able to go back to my home country for Christmas and then additional lockdowns started happening literally overnight so I had to rebook my flight just to get home and now,,, I don't know I've just been enjoying being back I guess. Trying to savour my time as much as I can because I REALLY don't wanna go back lmao but anyway I'm already halfway done with writing the next chapter so I decided it's the high-time to finally upload this :') Oswald character development coming right up!!

It was the time for him to risk it all.

People frequently had a strange habit of saying that “it would get better”, repeating the phrase like a mantra until all of its substance had been worn out, the words turning into hollow and meaningless sounds, yet somehow, despite its repeated use it was never acknowledged or specified what, when, or  _ how _ matters would steer themselves onto a clearer course. By putting things such as these into a wording of this kind, one could easily delude themselves into thinking that life would improve all on its own and without interference, not needing to put any sort of work into it--that a miracle would happen and, eventually, things would be at peace. However, that was not the mysterious ways of life worked, and only a crazed madman would be willing to repeat the same, futile sequence of accepting their fate in idle inaction over and over again, hoping that it would bring different results. It was tiring, exhausting the body and the mind down to the glitching cells, but it was simultaneously a vastly easier and more comfortable mindset to have than accepting the bitter and widely despised truth that nothing had ever happened on its own, just like that, and that it never would. The only manner in which one could at least begin to hope to change their unfortunate circumstances was through putting a sufficient amount of tireless work into it, and even then it still often turned out that it simply was not enough, and the cycle of remaining still would being anew. But at the very least, taking up arms and trying to fight through life to a better, sweeter spot gave a certain sense of purpose, a hope that the actions taken would not be in vain and that the universe, forever blind to motionless things, would sense a shift and turn the events to work in someone’s favour. One just had to realise this, to get to a point where they would no longer be able to handle their surroundings and the desperation of it would work as a driving force to give things one last, dying shot. 

Seven years was a long stretch of time, especially when your existence was such a brief one, and most of it had been spent on trying to get through one miserable day of near-crippling financial hardship and overwhelming responsibility after day after day, never sure whatever horrors tomorrow might bring; to have to completely build yourself up from the frail foundations you had been born onto. After spending a third of his life stuck in an endless loop of getting barely-paid positions of a disregarded drudge only to told it for a few months before moving to the next, equally unsatisfying job with various degrees of beatings peppered throughout, Oswald had finally decided that he had had  _ enough _ . This far, each step along the way he had taken was calculated, planned, and logical--rationally, it should have had been putting him inch by inch closer to the top, yet the results always boiled themselves down to hitting one rock bottom after the other, until his body was nothing but a mauled sack of shattered bones and bruised organs. Somehow, despite his best efforts and taking more risks with each job he had taken, all of it seemed more like a series of slip-ups and bad decisions, dragging him further away from his goal until he was suffocating under the pressure trying to make his very being implode. He had been trying to be careful, of course, slithering on the bottom of the city’s underbelly and staying mostly out of sight, memorising its every crease of skin and crack in its armour, waiting for an opportunity to crawl up its ugly, deformed sides and finally get to the top of it. There was no denying to the fact that he loved Gotham dearly, with all of the rot and the decay forming its corrupted body, but he had grown weary of having to battle for his survival deep within its guts and he yearned for the day when he could finally have his hand wrapped around its throat, able to dictate its every move to his whim. 

Thus, it was a high time for him to accept a bigger risk and take the actions he had been stopping himself from taking until he was absolutely certain that he had had a plentiful of good cards up his sleeve and that he had learned the rules of the underworld well enough to know how to play them  _ right. _ He was long overdue for a positive change, for gaining a name that mattered, or a sort of a breakthrough in his career that would eventually prove itself to be his gateway to reaching higher in the grim hierarchy responsible for pulling at the strings of the city behind the scenes. After spending so many years in the underworld, working for petty crooks, thugs, and frauds, he had learned a lot of things through observing them closely like specimens to be kept under a careful watch, only every so often getting glimpses of what it was like higher up the ladder. To his disappointment, he was quick to find out that those above were not much different from those below--the vast majority of them driven by greed and lust like mindless animals too focused on getting simple satisfactions or trying to prove something, to be able to see the bigger picture. Only those at the very top and those close enough to it seemed to able to see the true value of information, getting to their positions of power through meticulous planning and ruthless cunning rather than dumb luck or brute strength, an arsenal of weapons carrying to merit without knowing how to properly use it. If Oswald wanted to get somewhere, he knew that hoping to wriggle his way from the very bottom simply was not going to cut it--he had to throw himself into the deep water and hope that what he knew was enough to keep himself afloat, rather than let the merciless and treacherous currents suffocate him. But he knew he couldn’t aim too high just yet, being nameless and showing at a crimelord’s doorstep equaling a suicide, no-it had to be someone so influential to give him access to better opportunities, yet someone still under the kingpins’ thumb enough to want to hear him out. 

And that was exactly how he found himself standing in front of a certain nightclub in the heart of the City Hall District, dressed up in the best suit he owned as the flickering of a neon shaped like a skeleton of a fish threw a red glow onto his place face, hands curled into fists shaking at his sides. There were only two ways this evening could possibly end for him--either dead in a ditch and beaten beyond recognition, half of his bones broken and teeth missing, or finally having had taken a step higher in the underworld’s scene, inching closer towards its heart. The sign above the door announced the place to simply be  _ Mooney _ ’s, named after the owner of the bar that Oswald still remembered to once be a chicken fighting ring, until one day none other than Ms Mooney showed up there with her three-hundred-pound lapdog and claimed it for herself, to later turn it into a well-prospering bar. Gotham was a harsh place to live, even harsher below the surface, and possibly  _ the _ harshest for a woman trying to prove herself to those in charge, to show them that she was just as smart and that she could be just as ruthless as they were. Soon after her reclamation of a strategic point of the district, her hard work had paid off as it had gotten her into Carmine Falcone’s good graces and asserted her position as one of his direct subjects. But it wasn’t a long time since she had earned her regular audiences with the kingpin of the city--just enough for her name to begin to be spoken, but not quite enough for it to form a meaning of its own, detached from who she was working for. All of that made her a  _ perfect _ potential employer, smart and calculated but hungry for power, so close to the very top of the underworld’s hierarchy but too far from it to immediately dismiss someone who, to her, was nothing more than a rat pulled from the gutter. 

He only had one shot at this and he had to consider each one of his words extremely carefully before he could speak them, knowing that even as much as a falter of his voice or a slight change of his tone could make him seem untrustworthy and in need to be disposed of. It was already risky of him to decide to just walk in there and ask to be heard, without announcing himself before or having any sort of credibility to support his claims of knowing what made the lowest layers of Gotham tick. The only weapon and the only asset he really had were his words and almost foolish wish that he wasn’t about to walk into the gallows after tying the noose with his own two hands, already wrapped around his neck and hoping for it to not to be tugged. His heart was hammering up in his chest, every inch of his skin tingling from stress like the weight of what he was about to do was squeezing all of his his nerve endings at once as he took a deep breath and finally pushed the door open. Stepping in, he was almost immediately hit with a strange scent--alcohol and leather with roses permeating throughout, but there was just enough staleness in the air to make it truly feel like a nightclub, no matter how upscaled it was pretending to be. Frankly, he was surprised he even made it five feet inside before he was rapidly stopped in his tracks by what could only be described as a wall vaguely shaped like a human being, pair of dull blue eyes looking down at him from a sweaty, neckless face. “The fuck you looking for here, bird face?” Butch Gilzean asked him with his arms crossed over his chest, the sheer size of the man making him look almost like an exaggerated cartoon.

Oswald opened his mouth but only an incoherent sound came out, his mind and his body alike trying to assess and somewhat prepare for what being punched by someone of this built would feel like, calculate how long he would need to recover from a potential blow. “I-” he tried again, taking a step back and squaring his shoulders, giving Gilzean a challenging look, like he wasn’t afraid no matter how much he was shaking, his teeth clenched to the point of aching and his lip quivering ever so slightly when he finally managed to string some words together. “My name is Oswald Cobblepot, and I’m here because I would like to speak with Ms Mooney, if she’s available,” he told him candidly, trying to make himself sound polite, faking as much respect as he could possibly muster towards someone who looked like the embodiment of proverbial brawns without even a smidge of brains hiding behind his thick skull. The Gilzean gang had barely any credibility left in this city, and even less of its own autonomy, giving up on trying to make it on their own years ago for the sake of becoming sort of overpaid bodyguards or associates hardly ever let on the details of schemes they were a part of. Working for Ms Mooney must have been the best thing that had happened for that family in quite some time.

Scoffing, Gilzean leaned in forward as if to further emphasize the size difference between them, like threatening with his frame could somehow give more power to the words he was speaking or make his point stand stronger despite presenting no arguments. “Oh yeah?” he laughed, a menacing grin stretching his mouth with a breath smelling like alcohol and cigarettes. “And why do you think Fish would wanna waste her time on a little, scrawny rat like you, hm? What could you possibly have to say to her? Get outta here before I-”

“Butch,” he was interrupted by none other than Maria “Fish” Mooney herself leaning out of one of the leather-covered booths where she had been sitting so far with her back turned towards the entrance, a crystal glass in her hand as she raised one of her eyebrows at her lapdog. “I’m quite sure I’m capable of deciding who is worth my attention and who isn’t, wouldn’t you say? Let the kid in, if I think he’s wasting my time I’ll let you  _ show him out _ ,” she said, but the way in which she spoke those last words clearly stated that by “showing out” she definitely didn’t mean merely walking back to the door. Settling herself back comfortably in her seat, she just waved her finger as to call Oswald forward, and he didn’t waste even half a second to fulfil her order, not sparing Gilzean another look in the process. Ms Mooney held herself like she was the queen of Gotham already, enjoying an evening at her own establishment before the opening hours, watching her staff bustling around hastily to have everything in the right order for the clients to come. The gaze of her black eyes was just as cold and piercing as the early-winter wind hustling outside, sending the kind of chill that sunk deep into the bones and froze blood in the veins solid, putting crystals of ice in the muscle tissue until it hurt and creaked with every move like snow crushed under the soles of hundreds of boots. She sat with her legs crossed and her posture relaxed like there was nothing for her to worry about, or rather like she knew that there was nobody stupid enough to try to hurt her in her own realm, much less to threaten or to bother her with something insignificant. “Now, what someone like  _ you _ could possibly have that you think would interest me?” she posed the obvious question and she judged him with her head cocked to the side, the red strands in her short hair matching the colour of her perfectly done nails and her fitting dress, the jewellery shining in the lights of the club. 

This was it. This was his one and  _ only _ chance at proving that his life  _ did _ mean something and the information he had gathered through years of being surrounded by the lowlifes of Gotham had value--and that if he were to present it convincingly enough, he would find himself in a cosy spot with a steady source of income at the long last. All there was left for him to do was to sell it right and to speak every Hungarian prayer his mother had ever taught him at the back of his head, the familiarity of them soothing his racing heart enough to dislodge it from his throat. “Ms Mooney, I-” he cut himself off as soon as he started to swallow against the dryness of his mouth, well aware that he was shaking like the last leaves of the year clinging to the near-dead branches trembling to the violent rhythm set by the changing winds outside. “I was born in the Narrows,” he finally found the beginning of this story, brief enough to paint the picture without straying off-topic too much, yet with enough detail to give him more credibility. “I- I’ve been working on the streets for drug dealers and crooked bookmakers and loan sharks since I was sixteen years old. I know the Narrows, Old Gotham, and a pretty good portion of Tricorner’s underground scene as well as the back of my hand. I know  _ exactly _ who makes deals with who, I know who turns a blind eye at what actions, I know who would sell their loyalty to Mr Falcone for a case of cheap beer. I’m- I’m good at listening and I know a lot. And I would  _ love _ to share everything I know with you, for a chance to work for you so I can prove myself to you-” 

Ms Mooney kept looking at him, utterly unimpressed for at least ten full seconds after he had stopped talking, nothing about neither her face nor her posture suggesting what she might be thinking, whether she was impressed at least a little bit or she was seconds from shooting him right between the eyes. “Tell me, little penguin,” she said at last, pointing one of her slim fingers to the ceiling before turning it down towards Oswald’s chest. “Was this your great plan? To walk in here, to  _ my _ club like you own the place, wanting to be heard, and for what? Just so you could tell me that you’re a small, sly maggot from the Narrows and a  _ snitch _ ?” She clicked her tongue and puckered her lips, shaking her head slowly as she put her glass down on the table and draped one of her arms over the backrest of the couch she was sitting at. “I don’t like snitches, and you just said to me that you’d be glad to sell out every employer you’ve ever had for a paycheck. Why would I trust you, how would I know you wouldn’t betray me, too? And most of all, why would I want  _ that _ kind of information? Do I  _ look _ like I depend on the scum, frauds, and pickpocketers for my business to run well,  _ Penguin _ ?”

He didn’t like that. He didn’t like  _ any  _ of that--he didn’t like what Ms Mooney was saying, he didn’t like the way she was saying it, and he definitely didn’t like the nickname she had given him, one that--if he were to live until tomorrow--would probably stick to his skin like tar and feathers and he would never be able to disassociate himself from it ever again. “N- no!” he responded immediately, raising both of his hands in a defensive gesture, not failing to hear the sound of the safety of a gun clicking off as Gilzean loomed a few feet closer to the entrance, surprisingly alert for someone who seemed to generally struggle with operating a letter opener. “No, of course not, Ms Mooney, I would  _ never _ say that! And I’m- I’m not a snitch. I prefer to think of myself as a businessman, really, but if you think I’m a snitch I could at least be  _ your _ snitch.” He exhaled sharply, tasting metal in his mouth as the sheer pressure of the situation made him feel like all of his organs were being crushed in a mortar at an excruciatingly slow pace. “I- I came to you  _ exactly _ because your club is prospering so well, because of  _ who  _ you are. I know you wouldn’t even have this place if one day you haven’t decided you wanted it and then just taken it. You’re- you’re a brilliant woman, Ms Mooney, without a doubt. And someone as smart as you surely must know that all the scoundlers crawling at the bottom of the Narrows and Old Gotham might not mean anything individually, but- but if you know relations between them and- and the sort of connections they have- That makes for a very large group of people that surely would be beneficial to have an upper hand with, wouldn’t it?”

Silence rang over the club like the tolling of cathedral bells while his words hung heavily in the sweet-scented air, each note of them resonating through the cramped emptiness, the tension of it making the back of his throat cramp like he was about to throw up. Ms Mooney was clearly pondering over what she had just heard, digesting the information and considering whether taking someone like Oswald in on payroll was worth taking the risk it carried with it. The risk of being betrayed was there spelt for her in red capital letters, something that a person as catious as her had to especially weigh the pros and cons of, but from the short exchange they had just had, she must have already figured out that Oswald was smart. And going against Fish Mooney herself, one of Carmine Falcone’s trusted people? Well, that was possibly one of the worst moves anyone could possibly ever do to themselves in this city, the sheer consideration of it akin to stabbing yourself in both feet and smashing your kneecaps, rendering yourself immobile and vulnerable, a  _ ridiculously  _ easy target. “I suppose I could use someone to hold my umbrella for me. God knows it rains in this forsaken city more often than not. And at least you already know how to dress yourself, I wouldn’t have to pay for your entire makeover like I had to do with Butch.” She stood up from her booth and stepped close to Oswald, shoving her finger behind his black ribbon and tugging at it harshly. “If you ever as much as  _ think _ of crossing me, boy, I swear I will claw your eyes out and drown you in the very sewer you crawled out of, understood?” Not awaiting the answer, she pulled back, looking over her shoulder. “Butch, would you be so kind and give Penguin here his first paycheck right away, and then showed him his way out?”

“Sure thing, boss,” Gilzean hummed in response, and before Oswald had even had the chance to process what was happening, there was already a hand clenching on his shoulder with enough strength to crush his bones, and he was being dragged across Mooney’s and out the back, leading into the darkened alleyway. As soon as the door fell shut behind them and he was about to ask what any of this meant, to make sure that he had done well and he wasn’t just being pushed out there to get a bullet to the back of his head, a fist crashed into his cheek with the power of a wrecking ball, and the whole world went black. Next thing he knew, he was lying flat on the ground with a splitting headache and hot blood spilling from his nose and the corner of his mouth, half of his face pulsating with sharp pain, the buildings above him coming rapidly in and out of focus. “You better be here tomorrow, two in the afternoon on the dot and until you’re dismissed. Be one minute late and a little beating’s gonna be the least of your problems,  _ Penguin _ ,” he could hear Gilzean’s voice coming to him like from the end of a long tunnel, words echoing in his ears until they were barely recognizable. There was a soft thud landing somewhere next to him, but Oswald could barely breathe, let alone move to see what it was, his fingers twitching on the cobblestone like they wanted to check the damage but they couldn’t, his brain in too much of a shock to allow even an action as simple as that.

It was only him afterwards, left alone in the back alley to recover on the cold, frost-laced ground while the billowed clouds gliding lazily across the sky kept getting heavier, as if to threaten with an upcoming snowfall mixed with dirty rain. He didn’t know how much time he needed to scramble himself up to a sitting position, but even when he had finally managed to do so, the aching wasn’t stopping and there was still blood in his mouth, his lower lip and a some parts of his gums split open from the impact. After a few more seconds of getting his breathing under control, he finally looked to the side only to see a thick, yellow envelope waiting for him there, the corners of it already damp from the residue of the bad weather passed hours ago. With his hands shaking, he picked it up and slid his fingers inside, retrieving a few one hundred dollar bills, all of them smooth and crisp like they had just been printed, the sight of them making his heart jump. His mind cleared like a charm as he thumbed through the money, counting them quickly in his mind only to swiftly realize that there was  _ at least _ seven thousand dollars in there, just for him, just for the  _ beginning _ \--given to him just like that- no. No. No, this money paired with the blow to the face strong enough to knock out someone twice his size was hardly a sign of good faith, if anything it was a warning not to mess with Ms Mooney or the consequences would be much,  _ much _ more severe. But the bottom line in all of this  _ still  _ remained that now he had money and he had the job he had been striving to get for years now, and the sudden rush shooting through his body like drugs made him feel lighter, nearly entirely soothing the throbbing in his jaw and teeth. If this was his  _ pre _ -paycheck, then he would no longer have to ever worry about rent or having enough money to eat, never again have to resort to doing this he dreaded and making him hate himself a little bit more every time, he could- 

A smile spreading on his quickly swelling face, he shoved the envelope into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and reached for his phone, quickly tapping in the right number and pressing the device against his ear as he put his hand against the nearest wall, helping himself up to his feet. “ _Anya_?” he said as he heard the other end of the line click. “ _Igen, én vagyok az._ Listen, mother, I just- I just wanted to tell you that I’d like to take you out to dinner tonight. You know how much I love your cooking, but it’s been a while since I treated you to something special, and I’m quite sure Ed won’t mind being left alone for a few hours- he has already gone? Oh.” Oswald felt an inexplicable jab somewhere deep in his chest upon hearing his mother inform him that Ed had picked up the little things he had and had gone away, managing to find an apartment somewhere on the opposite end of Old Gotham, one that didn’t require putting in a deposit. He had told Oswald about that, of course, but it still stung like acid poured into an opened wound, sizzling and burning down to the bone, that he hadn’t even waited to say goodbye. Two in the afternoon, wasn’t it? “I see. I’ll be home to take you out within an hour, _anya_. I’d like to celebrate with you properly, but I- uh, going to have to head out fairly early tomorrow. I’ve got some matters to attend do, I’m afraid, but- ah, dinner first.”

There was something important he had to do.


	7. seven; Ed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiii y'all sorry for another late upload but my life is kind of a 💫mess💫 right now and I've been mighty depressed so I wasn't writing much- but I'm probably going to have much more time now so hopefully we can go back to one upload per week from now on :') anyway I hope you're going to enjoy this one and as always--I'd love to hear your thoughts!!

His life was beginning to look up, somewhat.

The alarm rose up in the still, stale air with the intensity of an explosion, the shockwaves of it bouncing off of the crooked walls while the vibrations shook up the brittle bones of the building like an avalanche, threatening with a total collapse of its weak, mangled structure. It was as though there was barely enough place in the cramped room to let the sounds fully ring out and movements to be executed without risking tearing it apart, the crummy apartment resembling the inside of a damp shoebox more than a living space. Everything it amounted to looked and felt like it was at the verge of falling apart--the ceiling suffering water damage painting brown circles on its colourless surface, dark-green paint peeling off like grotesque patches of sick skin, the floor creaking, splintering, and dipping under the faintest steps. Whatever little room there was left between the old pieces of furniture--half of them in barely usable condition and half of them appearing to remember the past century--was claustrophobic and suffocating, everything shrinking inch by inch every single time there was nobody to keep a careful watch. It was as if all the lines and edges were slowly coming in on each other more and more until, one day, they would merge into a trap with no escape, like diseased bones forced to fuse together and limit movements entirely. That unsettling sensation was only further intensified at night, when the darkness grew heavy and nearly impenetrable, swallowing the sickly glow of the naked yellow bulbs and the flickering of the signs outside, going as far as to drown out the sounds of the narrow streets below. Although the walls seemed to be paper-thin, the only noises ever to be heard were coming from the shabby corridor outside, as if as soon as the residents had entered their apartments, they turned into ghosts cut off from the world of living completely. Even the air itself had a strange, unsettling quality to it--it was thick and tasted funny, settling into every nook, crease, and cranny lungs had to offer like toxic fumes, building up in its residue only to one day deprive of oxygen, and inevitably kill. 

When Ed finally reached for his phone and pressed at the buttons to make the piercing sound cut off into ringing silence, the skies outside were still darkened with only a pale, neon glow spilling inside in a striped pattern through the grimed and frost-laced windows, blows of wind sighing in the creaks of the frame. He had only been there for eighteen hours, yet he already felt trapped, almost like the blurred and crooked contours of the apartment had swiftly become the bars of his holding cell, or the lid of the coffin he was soon to be buried in. Frankly, this apartment was hardly any bigger than either one of those locations--stepping inside from the equally crummy corridor it took six steps to cross the entire pitiful thing and get to the other side of it, the rattling door banging against the old bedframe upon opening and only remaining closed while locked and chained. The truly microscopic closet had just enough space to fit one bag worth of clothes inside, but the decaying bookshelves were nowhere near reliable enough to actually put books on them, a layer of dust already making it bend and moan under the weight. Whatever square foot of room there was left between the foot of the bed and the kitchenette barely holding itself together was only further divided by an island with a barstool in the middle of it, likely also going to serve as a desk there simply was no space for. Right next to the lukewarm fridge, there was a door hanging on just one hinge that led to an even smaller bathroom, the shower cabin shoved into the corner with a ratty washing machine squeezed right next to it with a toilet in front of it and the sink on the other side, the mirror of the cabinet above it splintered. It wasn’t… it wasn’t much. It wasn’t a perfect apartment to live in and most definitely  _ not _ what Ed had hoped for when he had decided on the move, but it was still vastly better than being homeless or imposing on the only friend he had, and with the rent being dirt cheap, well- he tried his best not to complain. 

Sighing heavily, he gave himself ten more seconds of staring blindly at the creaked ceiling before he finally sat up in his squeaking bed and grabbed his glasses from the nightstand, the world coming back into focus and bringing out all the depressing details of the broken appliances and crumbling structure of the apartment. Cold chills ran down the entire length of his body when his heated skin met the freezing air around the second he shoved his comforter to the side, the heating system barely functioning like everything else there. But it was  _ something _ , and Ed was simply glad that he had managed to find another place to live so soon after he had lost his tenancy in the previous one, and in quite a good location too--although poor, the area wasn’t all too terrible and it was just a forty-minute bus ride away from his new workplace. As much as he greatly appreciated Oswald allowing him to stay over for a few days, and his mother doing everything in her power to make him feel welcome, Ed couldn’t help but constantly feel a certain degree of deep-seated discomfort, the anxiety pushing him to the edge of his seat. For seven days and eight evenings, he was constantly smothered with a sickening sensation that he was completely out of place, his awkward body too misshapen to fit into these intimate settings, something at the back of his head constantly repeating that he was an intruder. He didn’t like to think about it--and he most certainly wouldn’t be willing to admit it neither to himself nor anyone else--but the truth was, what was making him the most anxious about his stay with the Kapelputs was the jarring  _ foreignness  _ of it. Oswald and Gertrud didn’t have much by any means, but what they did have was each other and there was no denying to the fact that they loved each other  _ so much _ , and it was exactly that kind of love that was making Ed’s brain strain from overworking itself in the attempts to comprehend it. He was better off on his own.

The clock on the dimmed screen of his phone showed barely three minutes past seven in the morning when he finally rose up, stretching briefly before grabbing his hoodie from the floor and pulling it on to shield himself from the cold, hands crawling into the pockets of it to retrieve a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a plastic lighter. His first shift at the pharmaceutical company he had agreed to accept the job offer from wasn’t starting for another two hours, but he would rather have the time in the morning to prepare and work through anxiety, instead of going there with his stomach at the back of his mouth. Besides, he had already gotten healthy eight hours of sleep and knowing his body as well as he did, trying to nap for another hour would inevitably end with tossing and turning, further agitating his nerves. With his cigarette already lit and choking out faint stripes of blue smoke, he turned the kettle on and headed towards the window, struggling with it for a brief moment before peering it open, letting a gust of wind blow inside and make him tremble once more, clothes far too thin for this temperature. It had snowed last night--a layer of greyish fluff covering the railings of the fire escape stairs and windowsills only to then turn into brown and black slosh under the soles of hundreds of boots and tires of dozens of cars wadding through it in the early mornings. Ed would lie if he had said that he was looking towards starting his new job because, no matter how relieving it was going to be to finally have to stop worrying about money and feeling a surge of panic every time there was a new bill coming, he  _ knew _ that he was going to be bored and he  _ knew _ it was going to be unfulfilling. “You really do enjoy making yourself miserable, don’t you?” Riddler pipped in as he stood with his shoulder against the wall, both hands in the pockets of his suit pants, his expression just as pretentious as the entirety of his dark outfit. “We know that your boring job doesn’t  _ have _ to be boring. And, let me just double-check that, weren’t you going to quit smoking three packs ago?”

With a roll of his circled eyes, Ed stuck his head out of the window with one of his knees resting on the windowsill as he exhaled slowly, watching the clouds of smoke dissolve into the early winter air and taking a moment as he pondered whether he  _ really _ wanted to engage in this discussion first thing in the morning. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been under quite a bit of stress lately, stress makes people more prone to clinging to unhealthy coping mechanisms, and since I’ve already been smoking for a while it makes quitting more difficult.” He took another drag, letting the nicotine hit his brain and briefly release the tension knotted in his shoulders that not even a full night of rest could smooth out. “I can stop once things have settled down. Which they will, soon. I have a job now, and- I don’t have to worry about the bills anymore, I guess.”

“Ah, that’s great news, so now all  _ we _ have left to worry about is your crumbling mental health, a perspective of an unsatisfying employment, and a steadily developing addiction it’s not going to be easy to just quit on,” Riddler said sardonically as he waved his arm around, pushing himself off the wall and looking up to the ceiling as if to assess the damage of it, or try to calculate how many more rainy days it would take for the decrepit roof to collapse. “Ed, I’ve been living on the inside of your head for the past fifteen years so it’s not like I’m not used to  _ deplorable _ living conditions but even I’ve got to admit that this place is a shithole. And you’re just going to keep on lying to yourself that this is fine? That it’s good enough and you’ll be okay living here, that you don’t actually  _ need _ central heating or a fridge that actually keeps the food cold?” He made an exasperated sound as he stepped back to the window, looking at Ed with an insistence, the burning kind of it that forecasted a heated monologue or a scalding flood of arguments about to be spilt. “Come on now, Ed, do you  _ really _ want to tell me that you’re going to be working at a chem lab and you’re not the tiniest bit tempted to take advantage of it? This city is rotten to the core with two-thirds of the police looking the other way at any sign of law violation, it would be a waste of resources not to cook a little something on the side- For rainy days. And before you say anything!” he exclaimed, raising both of his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Need I remind you that you’re not exactly a model citizen as it is? You’ve been on the job market for years and I have yet to see you pay a single tax.”

Ed choked on the smoke as he shook his head rapidly as he felt his credibility slip through his fingers, his groggy mind still too thoroughly ridden with the residue of deep slumber to come up with valid counterarguments quickly enough to be able to hold his stance. “No! That’s  _ different _ !” he objected, extinguishing his cigarette on the frame of the window and throwing the butt of it into the jar standing next to him--he kept it to serve as an ashtray since yesterday when he had emptied it of the food Gertrud had given him as a parting gift. “I’ve always been barely making cents, if I were to pay taxes from it, I would never have enough money to eat! Besides- loopholes are meant to be exploited. It’s not my fault that whoever mad those rules up failed to see how easy it was to avoiding taxing. And these two things are incomparable I’m not- I’m not gonna cook meth to make making ends meet easier!”

Deciding that he had made himself perfectly clear once again and not wanting to dig himself any deeper into this pointless row, he closed the window shut with a slam that shook the scratched glass up and took off to the kitchenette to make a cup of coffee he so desperately needed to get through this morning. “Hey,  _ I  _ didn’t say anything about meth, this idea was all yours! I’m just saying that since you’ve already come to that point all by yourself, maybe it’s a path that would be worth exploring a little-” Riddler gave the last attempt at trying to make his sloppy plan seem less insane, but Ed was no longer listening, already busying himself with taking out one of his nicer shirts and a fairly new pair of pants from the closet and heading for the shower, hoping that at least the rush of water would stop this insistent train of thoughts from spinning out of control. Going through his morning routine of cleaning himself up, shaving, and preparing lunch while chewing on some breakfast on the side gave him just enough time to triple-check that he has locked the door as best as their lamentable condition allowed and take the earlier bus to work. It was strange to see the city this early in the day--when the skies were only beginning to brighten up far on the horizon and everything was tinted a strange shade of light blue and pale gold, the first rays of the sun sparkling on the fresh snow and thin icicles almost making Gotham seem beautiful. For some reason, sitting at the very back of the bus and observing the streets this early on, when the world was only beginning to wake up from a cold and dark night, made Ed feel something that was almost shaped like hope. Like no matter the rough and unsteady start, it wasn’t the end of the road for him just yet and it certainly wasn’t the time for him to give up, that it’s only been two weeks and, well, it was still only the beginning. 

Unfortunately, this newly-found positive frame of mind quickly turned out to be incredibly short-lived, passing away quicker than the sparse minutes of light in the dead of winter, and before two hours of his first workday had passed by, Ed was back to square one feeling miserable. He hadn’t had particularly high expectations regarding the excitement or enjoyment he would be able to draw from his position, but still the kind of tasks he was burdened with was mind-numbingly boring and the people was forced to interact with were far from pleasant. Since he hadn’t done any specialistic training in this field before--spare for a class he had taken in his second year just for fun--and  _ only _ a degree in Chemistry, supplemented with an abundance of recommendation letters, he wasn’t let anywhere near the early drug development which, of course, were the only actually  _ interesting _ stages of the entire process. No, he and all of his knowledge were put more to the back of this chain, in the testing lab and asked to listen closely and then shadow one of the other scientists there--an overall unlikable middle-aged man with an obnoxious habit of explaining everything as if he was speaking to a child, not to an early graduate with a set of honours. The seconds had been truly stretching themselves out into hours for the first half of his shift, his coworkers’ judging gazes and hot breathes making his skin blotch with an itching rash whenever they peeked over his shoulder to make sure that he wasn’t doing something wrong, or just to make an unnecessary remark for their own pleasure. Curious eyes and irritating comments were  _ exactly  _ the reason why Ed had been looking forward to the perspective of working at a police station, because there his contact with other people would be limited to the minimum, and for most of the day he would be free to stay in the lab  _ alone _ . Here, on the other hand, he had to work in a team, around a group of people who thought they were better than him and, honestly, if most of his time there was going to be spent constantly at the verge of a panic attack, he was no longer sure whether he would be able to do this after all.

A welcome break from this seemingly never-ending strain of misery came around noon, shortly he was planning on finally leaving the lab for a dearly needed smoke break, he suddenly heard his phone vibrate from where he had put it on his desk, the screen lighting up with a message. Since there was only one person who could possibly ever want to contact him, Ed’s heart jumped in his chest with a sudden rush of energy as his hand reached forward, fingers clicking at the buttons to display a short text from Oswald. It simply read that he was out by the back exit of the building, and inquiring whether Ed was up for spending his lunch break together, all of it signed with  _ OCC  _ at the end as if it was a letter, Oswald’s characteristic way of expressing himself coming through even as a few pixels on a cracked screen. Ed didn’t need to be asked twice, and he was pulling his goggles off and throwing his white coat over the back of his chair the second his eyes skimmed over the last letter, muttering a brief explanation to the lab technician overseeing his work when he was already halfway out the door. He couldn’t explain it, not that he really wanted to think about this too deeply, but if there was one thing that could possibly improve his otherwise terrible mood on that gloomy day, it was spending the half an hour of his break with Oswald. They had gotten closer ever since Ed had spent a week sleeping on the Kapelupts’ couch--over the course of his stay there had been plenty of opportunities for them to get to know each other better and form some sort of a bond, no matter how fresh and fragile it still was. So, when Ed pushed the back door open and stepped out into the cold, he couldn’t help but feel a wide smile stretch his mouth as he saw his friend waiting there for him, a purple scarf thrown over his shoulders in a very classy manner. “Oswald!” 

“Ed,” Oswald greeted him with smoke escaping his lips as he threw his nearly finished cigarette down to the ground, the little thing with a white filter disappearing in a heap of snow piling up on both sides of the alleyway they were standing in. “I’m glad to see you’ve gotten yourself a job and a new apartment, but I do have to admit that I wish you’d told me of the good news in person, or called. You didn’t even really say goodbye yesterday when you were leaving, either, but my mother told me that she sent you on your way with a parting gift, at least. If the choice was up to her, she would probably keep you there for another week or two.”

Immediately, Ed’s face flushed up with embarrassment as he looked to the side, fingers reaching to his glasses only to then intertwine as he wrung out his hands, head falling forward slightly as he tried to come up with an excuse for his sudden disappearance. “I- I’m sorry,” he mumbled at last as he tugged at his jacket, fumbling with the zipper to distract himself from the overwhelming wave of shame at least a little bit. “I just didn’t want to inconvenience you or your mother any longer than it was absolutely necessary, and I found this one tiny apartment a little over half an hour from here, and I wanted to take it before someone else would because the rent is really cheap- And you were out, too, and I knew I would be starting today so the less I was with you the less I’d be in debt with you and- and I’m going to pay you back for letting me stay with you for so long, of course, I just needed to make sure that I’d have the-” 

Oswald raised his hand to stop him, his knuckles and high cheekbones reddened from the cold, the brightness of the snow around them making all the contrasts that amounted to him more prominent, the difference between the paleness of his skin almost blinding in comparison to his black, feathery hair. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Ed, I’m just saying that I wish you’d texted me before you left, at least. But that’s no matter, water under the bridge,” he said softly as he shrugged, pressing his lips into a thin line until there were dimples creasing his hollow cheeks. “I’d like to speak with you, though, preferably somewhere warmer than a backstreet behind a drug company. There is a diner just two blocks down from here, if you have enough time to spare. Shall we?”

Not even ten minutes later, they were already occupying a small booth of an establishment that would better be described as a moderately expensive and quite intimate bistro rather than the kind of cheap and tacky diners Ed was used to visiting every now and then. It was pleasantly warm there, just enough to take off your jacket but not too heated to sweat under the layers of clothes, and the air was permeated by smells vastly different from burnt coffee and greasy eggs with bacon, not a single drop of ketchup and mustard staining the tablecloth. The menus weren’t sticky either, people sitting quietly over their lunches far from appearing like they were struggling to make it through the month--all of these details made Ed strangely uncomfortable and mildly confused, as these most definitely were not the kind of settings he had expected. Each time he and Oswald had met before, it was on a dirty street, a shabby diner, or a darkened bar, not even Oswald’s own apartment having that specific quality of being  _ nice  _ to it, a characteristic clearly showing that it cost just a little bit too much to be in either one of their reaches. Something was clearly up and it was driving Ed’s anxiety up the wall to not be able to figure out  _ why _ , none of the meals offered in the bistro’s card making any sense to him as he attempted to read it from top to bottom for the umpteenth time, his leg jumping under the table nervously. “It’s uh-” he said as he gave up in his futile attempts, putting the menu down and looking around while Oswald sat across from him with his hands flat on the table. “It’s a nice place. It is, but uh, I’m not going to get my paycheck for a bit longer, I’m not sure I can- afford it.”

“Don’t worry about this at all,” Oswald told him dismissively as he perked up a little, straightening the black tie he was wearing instead of his usual ribbon on that particular day, the smooth piece of material embroidered with little, dark-purple flowers matching the floral pattern on his waistcoat. “I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Ed, money is actually exactly what I wanted to discuss with you. As you know, things have been pretty tight for me, well for  _ us _ , lately and, honestly, at more than one point I thought that it was the end of the road for me. Even when you’re not exactly a law-abiding citizen, there are only so many things you can do with yourself, and even in Gotham.  _ But _ ,” the paused briefly as the waitress stopped by their table to bring him the tea he had ordered when they first walked in, and asking whether they had already decided on the food before walking away. “But, luckily for me, I got a job. Quite a good one at that, too--I’ll tell you about it on our way back.” He then reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out an envelope, handing it over to Ed with a surprisingly gentle smile, the kind of smile he so often gave his mother after being addressed with a term of endearment. “This is for you.”

Scrunching his eyebrows, Ed looked between Oswald and his hand a few times with confusion before he slowly reached for the envelope, his lungs shrinking and closing in on themselves from stress as he slid his fingers inside, retrieving a few, crisp hundred dollar bills from the inside. “Oswald,” his head snapped up, hands shaking as there was something swelling in his throat at a rapid pace, not letting him swallow or even breathe properly while the ringing in his ears intensified until it drowned out all the other sounds of the bistro around them. “What- what  _ is _ this?”

With both of his hands raised, Oswald chuckled. “What do you think it is?” he uttered cheerfully, but there must have been something on Ed’s face because his gleeful attitude dissolved almost immediately, shoulders slumping as he reached up to rub at his neck, eyes turning away almost in embarrassment. “The job I got- it pays well. Really well. I bought my mother some new jewellery yesterday and then I took her out for dinner to a classy restaurant and this-” he cleared his throat. “I called the Gotham Institute this morning, the one you told me was handling the course G.C.P.D. was forcing you to take to even consider you for a position there. They said that they were willing to break down the fees into monthly instalments which, granted, will turn out a bit more expensive in the long run, but it will also make the payments more manageable. There’s fifteen hundred dollars in there, just enough to cover the first month and then some. It’s not- it’s not  _ charity _ ,” he explained further, scratching at the surface of the table between them with his finger like he was nervous or ashamed that his good intentions could come across as hostile or prideful, or maybe because he wasn’t used to executing acts of kindness just as much as he wasn’t used to receiving them. “You- you really helped me when I needed it, and when you really didn’t have to, and it’s not forgotten. You’re my friend, Ed Nygma, I just-”

He didn’t have the time to finish whatever he was planning on saying next, because Ed was already out of his seat and pulling him out of the booth on a sudden impulse, wrapping his arms around him in a tight hug while trying to ignore how much the touch seemed to be burning his skin. People were staring at them and he knew they were, but in that brief moment he couldn’t quite bring himself to care, too overwhelmed with a hot sensation pooling up in his chest and spilling down to his belly to pay much attention to them. “Thank you,” he just muttered while Oswald remained perfectly frozen for a couple of seconds before exhaling a relieving snort, returning the embrace and giving Ed’s shoulder a few affectionate pats, humming something shaped like  _ you’re welcome _ . All of this lasted perhaps five seconds, but still it was long enough for Ed’s eyes to flutter shut and squeeze a bit harder, like this was exactly what he was yearning for his entire life yet something he had always been refused, and now that an opportunity presented itself he wanted it to last for just a bit longer. He wasn’t alone, he knew he wasn’t alone anymore but he needed physical proof for it, he needed just a second more to be reassured that there was someone there for him, someone who cared about it, truly and undeniably. 

It seemed Gotham was the right place for him after all.


	8. eight; Oswald.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all!! Sorry for yet another late upload but things have been hectic in my life and in my own head lately and I needed some time to process everything + figure out what to do with my life now + find ways to busy myself with stuff before I can go to uni again in October since I dropped out. So yeah it's been a bit crazy and I couldn't for the life of me focus on writing but I'm getting everything under control now. I only think that I'm going to have to rewatch Gotham from the start to get some of that excitement for the show back!! Anyway here's the next chapter and I would love love love to hear your thoughts about where the story is going so far <3   
> P.S. Just to hold myself accountable--the next chapter will be uploaded on 23rd of January :)

This was the best decision he’s ever made.

Slow music was gliding slowly through the warm air from where a band of three was swaying to the rhythm of it with their eyes closed, the harmonic tones just loud enough to fill and even out the gaps between the sips and breaths taken by the clients, yet not too overwhelming to disturb them in any capacity. People dressed in clothes just expensive enough to show that they were amongst the few who didn’t have to worry about paying rent each month were talking in hushed voices, two dozens of them blurring into an incoherent hubbub as they sat with filled crystal glasses in their hands. A sea of little carmine lamps shining on each one of the matted tabletops was complimenting the plush, crimson wall behind the musicians beautifully, a huge skeleton of a fish carved out of wood suspended above their heads, reminding everyone who this club belonged to at all times. Their dimmed red glow, the golden elements tastefully fashioned into the decor around, and the way it all shone and broke in the chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling were all giving the inside a certain warm hue--yet still there was a hint of coldness to it, like all the colours were laced with a layer of frost akin to those covering the windows peering outside. Roses could be smelled all around but they lacked their usual freshness, here turning sickly and deceivingly sweet, barely managing to cover-up the staleness of Gotham’s air and the biting odour of hard liquor pouring out and the cigarette smoke rising up to the balconies of the second floor. Everything in  _ Mooney’s _ was contradicting yet perfectly balanced and walking in there alone was putting a strange taste in one’s mouth, a sugar cube with a spoonful of cyanide that, despite being a deadly combination of polar opposites, here complemented each other in a manner nearly incomprehensible. It was like a clash of two worlds, a mixture of grittiness and decay of the depths of the underworld combined with the riches and upscale lifestyle of the upstairs, boiling those two extremes of a scale into a single concoction that could appeal to all.

This oddly harmonious dissonance was exactly what brought businesses from all the rungs of Gotham’s criminal ladder down to the City Hall District and at  _ Mooney’s _ doorstep, the elegant interior of it cutting itself off from the dilapidated streets around, yet simultaneously blending into it seamlessly. All of it, the design, the pricing of the drinks, and the location served a purpose--those used to a fancier lifestyle and taste could be slightly humbled by the chipped wood and scratched floors, while those familiar with the guts of the poorer districts could feel more important through the shelves of expensive alcohol and ambient atmosphere. It was also the main reason as to why Oswald found himself clicking into the middle of it all so quickly and so perfectly, all of his jagged edges and smooth spots fitting into these settings like a missing piece of a jigsaw, the position ideal for someone of his background, upbringing, and experience. Although he had been born in the Narrows and grew up dirt-poor to then later do things and work jobs he was less than proud of, he was still raised by a distinguished and dignified woman coming from Hungarian nobility, and thus he had been taught how to behave like he belonged to the upper circles. Besides, snitches like him had incredibly low chances of staying alive for long if they didn’t know how to make their way around the steps of the hierarchy and how to address people at each one of the levels of them--when boldness could be seen as an intolerable audacity and when as a quality of character. Of course, switching his surroundings from a crummy and badly-prospering bookmaking salon straight to working directly under someone so close to  _ the _ crimelord of Gotham was quite a big change, and so Oswald still needed to watch his step and everyone around him to learn all the ropes and minimalize his chances of an early grave.

So far, he had been doing everything in his power to prove to Ms Mooney that he was worth the pay and keeping around, fulfilling all of her tasks and wishes as efficiently and precisely as he was capable of without making himself seem like a lickspittle at the same time. If there was one thing that people in the underworld despised just as much--or more--as snitching, it was sucking-up, or at least sucking-up in an obvious way, lying flat on the ground and baring your soft parts seen as weak, pathetic, and entirely untrustworthy. He had had to find a perfect golden centre between staying humble and acknowledging his lower position while expressing moderate gratefulness at all times, and being sure of himself enough not to let his coworkers step all over him no matter his status--he was Ms Mooney’s employee and  _ only _ hers. The sort of things she wanted him to do wasn’t all too unpleasant to complete either, and if anything, carrying an umbrella over someone’s head or making sure that their glass would not run empty was quite a nice change of pace after going through unkept books or carrying parcels with drugs across police-infested districts. And he was  _ good _ at what he had been hired to do at the club and around his new boss--he dressed well, he had impeccable manners, and he knew exactly when to keep his mouth shut and when to speak up, so he was gaining Ms Mooney’s distanced and wary approval day by day. He enjoyed this work more than he had ever before, this position of something more than just an errand boy coming to him almost naturally, the act of preparing drinks and making sure another person was comfortable not all too different from taking care of his own mother. 

However, even with the good pay and rather pleasant duties he was managing almost effortlessly, Oswald wasn’t planning on staying in there forever--he wasn’t planning on spending the rest of his days, not even the rest of the decade, as someone short of a personal assistant who was mostly fading into the background, unnoticed. After all, he was smart and capable and he knew the city like the back of his own hand, he was  _ destined _ to achieve great things and he was more than determined to pursue them no matter how much time and degrading jobs it would take him, because he  _ knew _ he was able to shake Gotham up. But for now, all there was for him to do was to properly cement his position at  _ Mooney’s _ , to solidify the foundation he could then build himself up from when he had gained enough information, had enough knowledge of the intricate web of connections, and waited for the right occasion to advance up the ladder. Spare for the crooked gazes and the ridiculing scoffs he was getting from his so-called coworkers on a daily basis, there was nothing Oswald could really complain about--the pay was more than good, the duties weren’t half as difficult or exhausting, the hours were fairly regular which was a welcome change after being called in at various times of day and night. Moreover, with how many people there were coming to the club to either spend the evening listening to music or to seal some sort of a shady, half-legal or outright illegal deal, there was always all sort of information spilling from alcohol-stained lips. There was no denying to the fact that  _ Mooney’s _ was a goldmine of knowledge if one knew  _ how _ to eavesdrop without getting caught, and standing behind a bar pretending to be focused on preparing a drink for someone was truly a perfect spot for that. Well, that is--it would be, without any distractions. “Penguin, hey, bring my buddies a bottle of the good Scotch, yeah? On the house.”

Startled, he twitched where he was standing when a loud voice addressed him directly, a pair of meaty hands landing on the smooth surface of the counter and tapping at the wood impatiently, right before one of them rose up and snapped its fingers energetically. Tightening his grip on the neck of the bottle he was holding onto, Oswald shifted his eyes from where they were squinting at the glass standing in front of him and up to none other than Butch Gilzean with his shining face and threatening stature. For the past couple of weeks, Oswald had been doing everything he could to muster up enough respect for the man to cover up the reluctance and judgement always pooling up at the back of his throat, but it was in the moments like these that the challenge was proving itself nearly impossible. Gilzean wasn’t as dull as he appeared to be--he knew how to keep the people under him in line and he had quite a knack for making sure that the business at  _ Mooney’s _ was running smoothly and efficiently, but will all of his virtues, he was still a brute. An ungraceful brute at that, the suits he was wearing for work not matching the way he moved and spoke in the slightest, and if anything, it only made him seem more like a cartoonish villain or a parody of an Italian mobster. “I’m not a waiter,  _ sir _ ” Oswald pointed out to him politely as he put the bottle down, grabbing two cherries from the nearby container and plopping them into the glass. “Or a bartender, for that matter. I’m only here because Ms Mooney-”

Instantaneously, Gilzean’s face darkened, his eyebrows rising on his pearly forehead as he rested his elbow on the bar, leaning in until he was nearly leaning over Oswald despite the obstruction between them, the corner of his lips twitching. “What the  _ fuck _ did you just say to me?” he asked, lowering his voice to a dangerous whisper, quietly enough so none of the clients enjoying their overpriced drinks could be bothered by what was playing out next to them. He was making himself seem angry and sinister, while it was more than painfully obvious that he was amused, that toying with someone he knew was not only physically weaker than him, but also lower in the hierarchy was the peak of entertainment he could ever indulge himself in. Butch Gilzean was nothing more than an overgrown schoolyard bully in an expensive suit and carrying a gun, and Oswald had the misfortune of being shorter, skinnier, and backed into the corner. “Did you just say  _ no _ to me, little man? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Mistake. Oswald had just made a big,  _ big _ mistake. Swallowing around the block of ice crystalising itself in this throat, his hand trembled ever so slightly as he moved the crystal glass onto the nearby tray, his breathing stuttering as he turned his gaze away, not wanting to pose himself as challenging. “I- I apologize, Mr Gilzean. I’m really sorry, I’ll be right there in a second. I just- need to bring this to Ms Mooney, we wouldn’t want to keep her waiting, would we?” he blurted out with a nervous chuckle as he was already speed-walking away from the bar with his heart beating loudly in his chest, the fast pace of it banging all the way up in his ears, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple as he swore at himself silently. What had gotten into him? What, on God’s green Earth, had tempted him into talking to Gilzean like this, while knowing very well that he was Ms Mooney’s lapdog who would probably love nothing more than to see Oswald beaten beyond recognition? If he wanted to make something of himself, he first had to live long enough for an opportunity of it to arise, and by making comments of such nature he was undoubtedly shortening his expected lifespan. “I am so sorry for the delay,” he breathed out, acting on his best behaviour as he reached Ms Mooney’s table, far to the back of the club and near the door where she was waiting for her next appointment. “Mr Gilzean was just telling me what he wanted me to do next, and I-”

“You don’t work for Butch, boy, you work for  _ me _ ,” she snapped at him when she snatched the crystal glass off the tray and looked at it with squinted eyes before taking a sip, keeping the alcohol in her mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it down, her head tilted to the side as she gave out a thoughtful hum. “It’s not bad,” she finally said, the words making Oswald stand with his head a little bit taller because as mild as the comment was, in the mouth of Ms Mooney it was one of the highest compliments one could possibly get--especially someone who had only been on her payroll for such a short time. “But don’t spare gin the next time, I’m not a child and I can take stronger drinks than half of you,  _ men _ .” The way she emphasized that last word sounded off almost derogatory, like she couldn’t stand the sheer idea of men’s existence, let alone having to spend most of her time in their company, with a lot of them thinking they could do a better job than her than that. “Now come here, I have a job for you. I need a parcel delivered to Old Gotham, to one of the detectives at the G.C.P.D. and a scrawny rat like you will raise less suspicion than anyone on the payroll today. 

Oswald nodded his head enthusiastically, entirely ignoring the rather unpleasant comment Ms Mooney has made about his appearance, but as excited as he was to fulfil a task that clearly required his boss to have at least a little bit of trust in him, he was a bit hesitant. He was not particularly fond of cops, and he liked the idea of marching to a police station even less--all his life he has been avoiding law enforcement like fire, too afraid that one of them would remember his face and then his chances getting by them unnoticed would drastically drop. “I- of course, I would love to,” he told her nevertheless, folding his hands in front of his body as he looked over his shoulder a bit nervously, seeing Gilzean occupying one of the bigger tables with a few men just as large as he was. “But, uh- Mr Gilzean asked me to bring something over to his table, could I possibly do that first and then-?”

Clicking her tongue disapprovingly, Ms Mooney pointed the tip of one of her deep-red nails straight at his chest, waving the finger from side to side as she shook her head slightly, using her other hand to gesture at one of the other employees who immediately stepped forward, putting a thick, yellow envelope on the table in front of her. “I’m not going to repeat myself again,  _ Penguin _ , you work for me first and foremost. You do what I tell you to do first, and if you’re still on the clock afterwards, you can do whatever Butch wants you to do, are we clear?” Not waiting for the answer, she took another sip from her glass and handed the envelope over to Oswald, her dark eyes sharp and stern like two black diamonds shining on her expressionless face. “You’re taking this to the G.C.P.D., to Detective Harvey Bullock, you don’t ask questions, you don’t explain yourself, you just take it to his desk, understood? And you can just not come back afterwards, I don’t need you for anything else today. Just make sure that you give it to him directly, not some-” her words trailed off as there was suddenly a commotion rising up by the back door, one of the security guards clearly trying to ask someone to leave but to no avail. “What in the hell is going on there?”

Naturally, Oswald turned his head towards the exit to see what all the fuss what about, only to feel his face drop and his muscles tense as he felt tons of icy water course through his veins and flood his lungs until he felt like he was drowning, the masses swelling inside him until he was collapsing in on himself. Right there, standing with his hands raised in a defensive gesture and a nervous smile spreading over his pale face, was Ed, still clearly dressed up after work and with his glasses sliding off his nose as he was desperately trying to explain to the bodyguard that he was just looking for his friend, really, that he wasn’t looking for trouble, and- “Certainly,” Oswald told Ms Mooney hastily as he grabbed the envelope and shoved it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, already taking a step back and bowing slightly to show her that he was on his way already, and that he did not need to be reminded the instructions again. “I will be my pleasure, Ms Mooney, I’ll make sure that this parcel gets to Detective Bullock’s hands safely. I- I will call you or Mr Gilzean when it’s been done-” not waiting for the answer, he was already grabbing his coat from where he had left it behind the bar counter and skipped past the security guard, muttering a few words to him as he grabbed Ed by the shoulder and pushed him out. “What the  _ hell _ are you doing here?” he hissed out through clenched teeth when he had decided that they were far enough from the club to leave all the curious ears and peering eyes behind. 

“I- I’m sorry, I just finished my overtime, and- and I knew you were working late today, so I thought I would come over to see if you were getting off the clock already and as if you maybe wanted to have dinner with me tonight, since we haven’t seen each other since Monday-” Ed blurted out a string of words as he stopped in his tracks and turned around to face Oswald, wringing his hands nervously as he looked down to the ground, breathing out white clouds at a quicker pace than what could be deemed normal. His cheeks were bright red and his lips were chapped from the cold, his curly hair falling into his eyes as he tugged at a loose string of one of his gloves, the pitiful mitt already at the verge of turning into dust in a similar fashion as most of the things Ed owned. Oswald had to make a mental note to buy him something warm for the winter this upcoming Christmas. “I sent you a couple of texts, but then you didn’t reply and I started to worry, I- I just wanted to make sure that you were okay, I didn’t know they wouldn’t even let me in, I’ve never had issues with getting into clubs in Gotham until now-”

With his hand raised and his eyes closing for a moment, Oswald exhaled slowly as he tried to gather up his thoughts, stalling whatever it was that he wanted or was supposed to say as he threw his coat on, popping the collar of it up to shield himself from the gusting wind. His heart was still pounding in his chest so quickly it was making him breathless, twitching in a fluttering rhythm like he was the one who had gotten close to finding himself in some serious trouble--like it was his life that was at stake here, and not somebody else’s. “ _ Mooney’s _ isn’t just any bar, Ed, and you know it,” he uttered as he pinched at the bridge of his nose, free hand fumbling with one of his pockets to retrieve a slick case he had just bought for himself last week--a pretty silver thing giving out a satisfying  _ click _ upon opening. “You can’t just- ugh” he tried looking for the right words, but yet again he found it too difficult to string them together when there was a foghorn blaring in alarm between his ears, resonating through his skull until the world around went just a little bit out of focus. “Do you want one?” Oswald finally managed to press out, offering Ed one of his cigarettes as he popped the lid of the case closed and slid it back into his coat, pulling out a lighter instead and busying himself with igniting it, buying another couple of seconds to think about how to properly articulate his thoughts. The issue there was, however, that he wasn’t even entirely certain why he was shaking so much himself. “Look, I- I’m not off the clock yet, I have to get something done in the centre of Old Gotham, but if you- would still like to have dinner with me, I could bring over a bottle of wine later. It is Friday, after all.”

Ed sucked at the cigarette in his mouth quietly as he put the tip of it in the flame of the lighter he had just been offered, engulfing his face in stripes of blue smoke with a sizzle when he took a drag, the little red blaze throwing a warm glow onto his face in the growing dark around. It was clear that he was still a bit shaken up from how harshly Oswald had treated him, his eyes wide and movements skittish like he was a small creature startled by a loud noise or a great shadow, silently looking for an escape route. “You don’t have to,” he muttered at last, rubbing the fingers of his free hand together in a nervous habit. “But, uh- but if you want to, of course, I’d still like to spend some time with you. I just-” he scratched his neck as he looked away, a blush blossoming on his face quite strikingly despite the poor lightning thrown at them by the lantern above. “I don’t know, I guess I just thought that you didn’t want to be my friend anymore- Nevermind. Sorry. Can I- go with you?”

For some inexplicable reason, the thought of Ed having doubts about their friendship made a dull pang vibrate through Oswald’s chest, painful enough to catch his breathing in a stutter to the point where he nearly choked on the smoke, yet mild enough to not let it be seen just how hurt he felt. Nevertheless, with how quickly the topic had been changed, he elected not to address these concerns directly, and rather word himself in a manner pleasant enough to let it be known that he was still very much considered Ed to be his closest--and only--friend. “I would most certainly appreciate your company,” he hummed over the filter of his cigarette as he hid his other hand in the pocket of his coat, the knuckles and fingertips of it already turned red from the cold, as winter had always been the first season to come and the last one to leave Gotham over the years. “Although I’m going to have to ask you to wait for me outside once we get there. Ms Mooney wants me to deliver some sort of parcel to one of the detectives at the G.C.P.D. and she doesn’t want anyone to notice me while I’m in there, I’m sure you’ll understand. And don’t ask me what sort of words or items an upscale criminal and a detective could be possibly exchanging with each other.” He chuckled, a bit grimly. “She doesn’t share these sort of details with me, for now, I’m just an overpaid errand boy serving her drinks and holding her umbrella.” 

Nodding, Ed turned his eyes down to the pavement as they walked through the dark streets of Gotham, the lights mounted on old, steel posts throwing pale and yellow-tinted stains of light onto the slushed, brown snow piling up by the walls of buildings and against the curbs. They had fallen quiet for the two blocks it had taken them to reach the nearest bus stop going in the direction of the police station, a silence that usually was nothing short of comfortable now strangely strained and tensed, like there were still issues unresolved lying between them. Oswald didn’t approach it and mostly tried to ignore the tightness in his neck, as he didn’t have the finest idea what the matters was, until Ed had finally spoken up again, his voice smaller than normal and his gaze wandering somewhere on the face of the tenement house across from them. “Are you- are you upset with me?”

That was the precise moment when Oswald had suddenly realized that he was, in fact, still more upset than it could possibly be called for given the circumstances and their fortunate resolution, however, the reason behind this sense of agitation was far from what Ed was likely suspecting. It was not because he had done something more reckless and thoughtless than wandering the clubs and of Old Gotham late at night on his own, but rather because the idea of something bad happening to Ed chilled Oswald down to the bone and made him  _ sick _ . He had been living a dangerous life since he had been sixteen years old, but through all of these years he had always kept his mother away from the rot and the decay of the underworld, he had kept her  _ safe _ and now he wanted to keep Ed safe as well. The sheer thought of even something as minor as a broken finger or a strongly worded threat alone was making Oswald's skin crawl and his hands to ball into fists while his entire body recoiled. "No," he said softly as he shook his head with a gentle smile, patting Ed's shoulder reassuringly as something in his stomach bubbled and sparked, the heat of it making his insides boil up. "I'm not upset with you, Ed. Red or white, what do you think?" 

He had another person worth protecting.


	9. nine; Ed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey besties I'm finally uploading the next chapter that I've finished writing three days ago and then just had absolutely no motivation to upload or edit~ anyway lately I've been busy with studying for a driver's license doing English lessons and learning 3 languages at once lol so I'm a tad busy but I'm still gonna try to keep up with weekly uploads. That's all enjoy!

It was all beginning to fall into place.

Full two months had passed since Ed had first arrived in Gotham with nothing but two bags hanging off his shoulders, a piece of crumpled paper instructing him to seek the city hall at his earliest convenience, and a cold already settling into his lungs from staying out in the pouring rain for far too long. Looking back at everything that had happened to him since he had set his foot in the city, it seemed like it had come and gone in a blink of an eye, all the happenings that, at the time, had felt like the end of the world now being nothing more than slight bumps in the road. When he had been rejected from his dream position at the G.C.P.D., he had thought that it was the end of the road for him, and the efforts he had poured into his education had all been for nothing, and the struggle he had gone through to come to this point had been utterly meaningless. After all, he had found himself completely alone in a city bigger than he could have had ever imagined, with nobody, nothing, and nowhere to turn to while all the plans he had made for his life were seeping through his fingers like grains of sand. It had been far from the first time he had been in a distressing point--it hadn’t been the second, the tenth, not even the fiftieth--but by that time, he had simply begun to think that there was no longer any sense in fighting for what he truly wanted, that there was too much thrashing and clawing to it and he was already barely running on fumes. His life was a mess at the brink of total collapse with bills piling up and no means of paying them off, facing homelessness and starvation yet again, together with a crippling sense of loneliness and alienation, it seemed that the only thing left for him to aim for was to make it through yet another, miserable day. 

Now, short of sixty days later, Ed was feeling possibly better than he ever had in the past twenty years, his hopes for life restored to the fullest and a more positive outlook tinted in warm pinks and glimmering golds developed as he was finally comfortably settling himself into his new everyday. The specialistic Forensics course he was required to complete before he could apply for a job at the G.C.P.D. again had begun three weeks ago, and this extra bit of obligation and work for him to do was  _ exactly _ what he had needed to fully cement the routine he had been so desperately craving. If asked to explain it in simple terms, Ed wouldn’t be able to explain why he needed his days to have a structure to this extent, but there was something about the uncertainty of having too much free time on his hands that had always made him anxious, and he would much rather have a vast workload to do than endless hours with no means to filling them up. But lately, he had had more than enough things to keep himself busy with--the process of making a coherent schedule for his week and pinning it up to the fridge’s door where he could see it well while sitting at the kitchen island alone strangely calming him down. There was no longer time for him to sit in the corner of his bed and bite at his lips until they bled, thinking about whether he had made the right choices, whether he still had the time to do all the things he had been longing to do, whether he had made enough of his life so far. He had figured himself out, at least for now, working from eight until three, going to classes from four until seven, to then come back home around eight to either do whatever homework he had been assigned, or to spend some time with Oswald, whom--well--Ed owed everything to. 

But even with the changes for the better happening over the course of the past weeks, it was still not by any means to say that things were going  _ well _ for Ed, or that due to creating a fairly satisfying routine all of his issues had vanished, not leaving a trace behind. Although it was easier to handle now than it had been before, there were still bills to pay and debts to settle, he was struggling to keep track of eating enough meals a day, and the work that ought to be bringing him comfort and peace of mind, at times was too overwhelming to handle. It seemed like, up until this point, he had been suffering starvation so great that his stomach had grown accustomed to gnawing on itself, so when he had finally gotten the chance to satisfy all of his cravings, he had foolishly put enough things on his plate to spill out and make his insides rupture. Having a schedule to stick to, and consequently knowing what to do when and in what order, was keeping him grounded, however staying conscious of the world around was unavoidably tied to being constantly aware of the crushing responsibility and control he had over his own life. Although he had had to take care of himself since he could even remember, each passing year came to him with even more of a challenge, with an even tougher decision to make, all the while making him painfully aware that, no matter what he chooses to do, he will have to live with the consequences of it for the rest of his life. There were often moments, especially after waking up from a nightmare or staying up for two days without a sliver of rest, when he so very wished that there had been someone to tell him what to do, just once, or tell him whether he had made all the right calls. He was smart. He was so,  _ so _ smart, and he knew it, and he had to find as many ways to prove it as possible because, really, what else was there to him than his intellect? 

After a lifetime of being put down, he had grown desperate to show everyone around him that there was a flame inside him, that he was filled to the brim with promise and light but, lately, finding the proofs of it had become so consuming that he hadn’t even noticed that he had been burning himself out in the process. It wasn’t until he was falling asleep over his textbooks or getting cramping stomachaches that he had realized just how poorly he had been taking care of himself, like being an adult had abruptly become too much for him, and now he needed someone to watch over him. Unfortunately, there had never been anyone by his side to fulfil this tedious and time-consuming task, and now when he needed it so greatly, the only person he could  _ very _ reluctantly turn towards was Riddler. Ed didn’t like it, he didn’t like the idea of putting the matter of his own well-being into the hands of someone as reckless and chaotic as his other self, but he had come to a stage where there seemed to be no other solution. Besides, no matter how begrudgingly, he had to admit that lately, his relationship with Riddler had been almost okay--they had been chatting like only a couple of childhood friends could, watching movies together or quizzing each other from what they had learned, fifteen years of grudges forgotten for short, blissful moments. “Ed,” a voice on the inside of his head sounded off as he rubbed at his tired eyes, glasses resting at the top of his head, his neck stiff and aching from hunching over his neatly written notes for two hours without a second of a break. “Remember that riddle you told me when we were getting back from the G.C.P.D. a few weeks ago?  _ The poor have it, the rich need it, and if you’ll eat it you’ll die _ ? Because, for the eight time this week, I want to really put an emphasis on the last part of it, seeing how you’ve had a grand total of five hundred calories today and it’s  _ nine in the evening _ .”

Groaning, Ed shook his head to get rid of the colourful spots blocking his blurry vision as he reached down to the counter and grabbed a small, plastic container and dug his nail under the lid of it, popping it open in one fluid motion. “I know, I know,” he muttered as he smeared a bit of vaseline over his chapped lips, his tongue lying at the bottom of his dried mouth like a piece of old leather, the lack of hydration making it difficult for him to swallow down his parched throat. He had had half a mind to go to refill his bottle of water about half a chapter or so ago, but then he got so lost in revising his notes that the thought of getting up had slipped his mind, leaving him absorbed to the point where even his eyes were beginning to feel completely void of moisture. “I just- I just wanted to finish this section, and then I can cook dinner- or order something, I don’t know. I only have about ten pages left, Rid, food can wait until I’ve gone through Forensic Entomology-”

“You said that an hour ago,” Riddler pointed out with a full-bodied eyeroll as he crossed his arm over his chest, putting one of his elbows in the curve of the other in order to rest his face on of his curled fist while he stood right in front of the kitchen isle, brows raised high on his wide forehead. “And you’re going to say it again in another hour, when you’ve decided that, actually, despite having near-photographic memory, you need to revise everything you’ve already revised once again.” He sighed heavily, combing fingers through his slicked-back hair and straightening down his checkered suit jacket, his pristine black outfit making a jarring contrast between Ed’s worn-out sweatpants and a plain, white T-shirt. Despite a plethora of proof that being a fragment of someone else’s psyche was certainly far from an ideal state of being, it seemed that at least in the department of external looks Riddler was at a clear advantage, always pristinely dressed-up with perfect hair and flawless skin. “Come on now, Ed, we both know how this story goes. It’s a Friday evening, why don’t you just kick out for the rest of the day and let me have fun for once, huh? Or at least get a meal. I get hungry too, you know?”

Before Ed had the chance to somehow counter this proposal or to completely discredit it, not all too fond of the idea of giving up the control over his body and having Riddler drive it around, there was suddenly a knock to the front door, the sharp sound of it cutting through the stale air lingering throughout the entire apartment complex. Cold sweat rose up on his forehead and above his lip as he stilled like a deer caught in the headlights of a quickly approaching car, his fingers freezing mid-air with a black pen clutched tightly between them while he listened closely, the next unexpected pound making him jump in his seat. Waving at Riddler to go away and knitting his eyebrows in confusion, Ed rose up from where he had been seated feeling his muscles tense, his hand absentmindedly reaching for the umbrella propped against one of the walls as he frantically ran down the list of people who could possibly be bothered to come to  _ him _ . He had paid his rent a week in advance so it couldn’t be the landlord, he was unable to recall ordering anything so the chances of delivery were nonexistent, and if the Tax Office had found about his fairly harmless shenanigans, they certainly wouldn’t be searching for him this late at the very end of the workweek. Leaving all of these potential suspects out, there wasn’t really anyone left who would have enough motivation and reason to- “Ed, it’s Oswald Cobblepot, open up.”

His heart stuttered in his chest for a split of a second before it began beating up again, faster and heavier, more rhythmically and melodically, and the singing of it instantaneously washed off all the worries settled in the creases of Ed’s skin, leaving him at peace, albeit unspeakably excited. Quickly putting the umbrella back into its corner, he reached to the chains and the locks holding the cardboard-thin doors from flinging open at the slightest vibration going through the crooked walls, and pulled it open, a smile already blooming up at the corners of his mouth. Oswald didn’t look happy, not really--his face was scrunched and his jaws were visibly tensed, a certain gloom to his expression that could only be attributed to the lamentable state of his hair, all torn up and thrown around from the violent wind, its wailing seeking through the creaks of decaying window frames. His round ears and his pointy nose were alarmingly red, even his usually pale cheeks getting a healthier blush from the cold, his entire being shivering ever so slightly as the nearly nonexistent heating of the staircase could hardly bring any relief from the unforgiving winter of Gotham. “Oswald!” Ed exclaimed with surprise, although he didn’t try to hide the note of delight in his voice as he stepped to the side to let his friend inside, not failing to notice that there were snowflakes in Oswald’s hair, the very end of his ridiculously long lashes pale as if they frosted over. “It’s, uh- it’s good to see you, it really is. To what do I owe the pleasure? I haven’t heard from you in almost a week, I thought you  _ actually _ never wanted to see me again this time, but I’ve been so busy with everything I haven’t had the time to come over to your apartment to check up on you yet, and-” 

“ _ You _ haven’t heard back from  _ me _ ?” Oswald repeated with an emphasis to his words as he dropped a bag of what seemed to be Chinese take-out onto Ed’s bed and tugged at the purple scarf wrapped tightly around his dainty throat. He took off his coat as well, and spread it over the back of Ed’s chair to dry off from the snow, moving around the shoebox-sized apartment with an ease and familiarity of the owner rather than the guest, but, well, Oswald  _ did _ have that quality about him, that aura of power radiating from all of his sharp edges. “Ed, I have been trying to contact you for the past three days. At first, you were just not picking up so I figured you were most likely too busy to call me back. But today it went straight to voicemail, so I decided to come to see what was the matter. Well, and I figured that even if you  _ did _ get mugged, you wouldn’t say no to some dinner, and-” his hand disappeared inside the foil back for a moment, only to then emerge back holding a rather sizeable glass bottle. “wine. I brought a couple of good bottles this time, I’m tired of drinking alcohol from  _ boxes _ .”

The cheerful smile melted off of Ed’s face like snow at the first breath of summer, his chest getting tight from the weight of the guilt that immediately came crashing down on him as his tired brain connected the dots, the realization making him shrink. Because the truth was, as much as Oswald seemed to be concerned for Ed’s well-being, Ed had hardly paid him a single thought in these past days, too overwhelmed with the endless workload piling up into mountains all around him to even  _ think _ about looking at his phone. “I-” he stuttered out as went to fumble with the papers on his desk, and then rattled through the drawers of his bedside table and checked under the pillow, finally finding the battered old thing buried under the covers. “Oh, Oswald, I’m so  _ so _ sorry- I wanted to revise the material from my Forensics course to make sure that I remembered everything from when I was learning on my own and in college, but then I started finding pieces of information I didn’t know before here and there, and weeding them out was so time-consuming I stopped checking my phone at some point. The battery must have run out, that’s why it didn’t even connect you to me today. I’m- I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean for you to worry about me for nothing.” 

Raising his hand up in the air and making a dismissive gesture with it, Oswald just shook his head as he put the bottle down on the cluttered counter and walked around it to get to the kitchenette’s cupboards and drawers, no doubt looking for a corkscrew. “I won’t lie to you, my friend, I was pretty angry going here, but I suppose the temperature must’ve cooled me off- Do you really not have a wine bottle opener?” he asked with just a hint of something that simultaneously seemed to be both  _ and _ neither irritation nor disbelief, but the only response he could get in return was a helpless shrug, clearly saying  _ sorry, I don’t drink wine very often _ . “Very well then,” he sighed as he pulled a small pocket knife from the inside of his suit jacket and sapped it open, then proceeding to skillfully open the wine using nothing but, and doing it with a surprising amount of grace at that. “I would rather have you pick up my calls, Edward, but I’m willing to overlook this negligence for the sake of our friendship--just this once. Now, do you at least happen to have a glass, a cup, or mug? Two, preferably.”

Not even an hour later, the deep-seated tension in Ed’s neck and the overwhelming weariness in his shoulders were already long-forgotten, the dull ache of them quickly replaced by the light, fizzing buzz of alcohol swirling through his veins and heating him up from the inside. Despite devouring a container of noodles with vegetables and six duck spring rolls, his stomach has still been empty for far too long for the wine not to hit his head after less than half a bottle, the clouds of it shrouding his mind just enough to allow him to relax. For these past days, he had been so thoroughly consumed by his work and studies that he had almost forgotten what it felt like  _ not _ to be at the verge of a meltdown at all times, or just how much he longed for a few blissful minutes in the company of a friend. Oswald had come at just the right time and, truthfully, the concern he had had for Ed’s well-being touched him almost too intensely and too deeply, but thankfully there were enough distractions around him not to let him ponder over these feelings too greatly. They both clearly needed this, Ed decided when he scrambled up to his feet with one of his hands curled around the neck of a bottle, they both needed a moment to unwind and to just  _ breathe _ , to forget just how many responsibilities there were lying on them and, just for one evening, be the twenty-something-year-olds that they had never had the chance to be. Although they were seemingly as different from each other as two people could possibly be, one thing that they certainly had in common was that they were both very familiar with the growing pains of becoming an adult far too soon. In a way, it was as if it was that common link that kept on convincing them that, somehow, they did belong with each other, and there were more similarities between them than one could see just at the first glance. 

“Hold on,” Oswald nearly choked on his cigarette, his suit jacket loosely thrown over his shoulders while they both stood by the opened window, half-leaning outside and resting their elbows on the fire stairs and letting the cold air make their faces flush. “Hold on, let me just repeat that, just so I’m certain that I’m not misunderstanding you somehow. You don’t- you don’t pay taxes. No, you’ve  _ never _ paid a single tax. You’re evading taxation, committing a felony” he cut off for a second, as if to digest his own words before he chuckled, shaking his head as crescent-shaped dimples appeared on either side of his mouth, accentuating his smile. “You’re not the kind of a goody-two-shoes I thought you were.”

Ed couldn’t help but laugh at the comment, the wine making his head spin and his tongue go loose. “Come on now, Oswald, I’m not exactly innocent,” he hummed with amusement as he took another sip, resting his head back against the brick wall while the world before him came spinning out of focus, the lights of the building across the alley bleeding at the edges. There were neon signs sizzling up the walls, making a green and purple glow seep inside, colouring their hands and faces, and glimmering in the smooth curves of the bottles. “I doubt anyone really is, especially in this city,” he added as his eyes slid down to the gutters. “Besides, you aren’t the bad guy that you think you are, either. Who in Gotham hasn’t lied or meddled with the law here and there to make a living? It’s not like you killed anyone.”

He expected another gale of warm laughter, or a disapproving cock of an eyebrow, or even an annoyed eyeroll--he expected anything but to see Oswald still with the cigarette hanging from his mouth, the smoke sliding between his reddened knuckles as his eyes suddenly glazed over. It was almost like the entire world stopped around them for a moment, even their hearts ceasing in their tireless pace to fully seep in the severity of the situation, the air around them growing thick, clogging up the airways. Ed’s stomach sucked in on itself and curled up into a tight ball, its density tugging at the rest of the organs until it has hallowed his entire chest cavity and began to crush his ribs, the shards of it digging into his flesh from the inside until it was too late to stop the internal bleeding. The cigarette he was still holding between his fingers burnt through completely but he didn’t even notice when the ashes of it burned at his skin because he was so, so very cold he could no longer register pain and his eyes were fixated on the profile of Oswald’s face so intensely he could feel tears rising up in them. And then it all stopped. “This is a harsh world we live in, Ed,” Oswald just said flatly, not an ounce of emotion to it as he sighed heavily, rising up a cup to his lips, a single scarlet droplet swelling at the very corner of his lips, as if it, too, considered running from danger as fast as it possibly could. “It’s either kill or be killed.” He tilted his head back as he finished his wine, setting the now empty cup down on the windowsill, the neon light from the outside painting him royal blue and purple. “I nearly forgot, my mother wanted to know if you’d like to have dinner with us next Saturday. She misses you quite a bit. Frankly, it almost makes me jealous just how fond she has grown of you. Not that I can blame her, of course.” 

On all levels, Ed knew that he should be scared of who he had thought was his friend, or fear for his safety now that he knew he had gotten close to someone who was nothing short of a killer, yet as he gave it a second of thought, he had discovered that he could feel nothing of the kind. If anything, there was sort of a morbid curiosity being born in the very corner of his mind, somewhere at the back, hidden underneath a layer of alcohol residue and his usual cluelessness regarding what was appropriate and not. But whatever it was, it was most definitely neither fear nor worry, and the unexpected discovery had changed nothing in the way he had perceived Oswald--not as a cold-blooded villain capable of heinous crimes, but as his friend and possibly the only person who had ever truly cared about him. There was nothing rational about their friendship, by all rules or logic and reason they should not be getting along in the slightest, yet here they were months after their first chance encounter, growing closer with each passing day. Of course, there were still many things left unsaid between them, still plenty of details about their pasts that they had yet to disclose, but the bottom line was, all signs on heaven and earth were telling Ed that this had been simply meant to be. “I would love to,” he just said, nodding. “Should I bring something? I’m quite a good cook, actually, but I’m not sure if from your mother’s Hungarian perspective this would be seen as something rude-”

He was certain this had to be fate.


End file.
